


I Don't Even Know

by Ahab2631



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: "Realism", #Realism, ...Except when she doesn't, All The Artistic License, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Is A Sass Machine, And Is Probably Cranky Or At Least Perpetually Unamused, And really, And tends toward logic over emotions in general, Arguably playing god, Bisexual Female Character, But No One's Characters Will Be Oversimplified For Better Or Worse, But That Poor Wounded Arrogant Insufferable Asshole Doesn't Get Enough Love In My Fics, Dark Possibly, Demisexual MC, Demisexuality, Did I Mention Sass?, Dubious Morality, Especially Alina's, Ew, Expanding on Grisha abilities big time, Extremely Questionable Science, For Science!, Foreknowledge, Fun With Regicide (TM), Hopefully The Awesome Kind, I Feel Like I Should Light A Prayer Candle For This Thing, I Really Only Know What's Going To Happen In Like The First Four Chapters, I Should Warn You: I Don't Hate Mal With The Passion Of A Thousand Fiery Sun Summoners, I have no idea what is happening, I just have no desire to make one of myself, I mean I know why, In case there's any question: absolutely NOT a self-insert, It Will Be A Ride!, MC Takes No Shit, MC thinks too much, Maybe Baghra Won't Loathe Her, Maybe Evil Alina, Maybe sex, Morally Ambiguous Character, More power to self-inserts, Multi, Oh Look I Did, Only Rape/Non-Con Planned Is Reference To Genya's Situation, Philosophical Leanings, Probably Some Fooling Around With Ivan, Rough Sex, Sexy Times Probably, Shall We Line Up To Kick Darkles In The Ancient Junk For That?, Spoilers From Every Grisha Book And Short, Strong Female Characters, Well Even More Sass, When she blows up basically xD, hahahaha, idk - Freeform, maybe slow burn, strong female lead, we'll see, why
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2018-12-18 01:44:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 136,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11864049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahab2631/pseuds/Ahab2631
Summary: After her discovery on the Shadow Fold, Alina comes to the Darkling more prepared for his nonsense than he could possibly imagine.





	1. Preface Snapshot Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone is in their twenties. Where in their twenties is up to you, idc. Characters will be a little changed as a consequence.
> 
> MC will generally be a tough-as-nails, unamused sass-monster.
> 
> It's a little indulgent, but it's just for fun. *pauses* ...I'm worried there's a reason this has never really been done in this fandom.
> 
> Too late now.
> 
> FOR SCIENCE!
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> Nifty little vignette-style idea that's been stuck in my head for a while. We'll see how it goes.
> 
> Main relationship TBA
> 
> I don't plan on delving much into the "OH SHIT WHERE AM I WHAT'S HAPPENING" thing unless the narrative requires it. Basically just pretend she adjusts creepily well to "impossible" *waves to Nikolai* stuff, or whatever you want that will make your brain happy.
> 
> Standard disclaimer: I don't abandon fics. Ever. *dramaticface* But I do have a brain thing that sometimes makes writing impossible. Don't let long waits between chapters scare you. We (the story and I) ain't goin' nowhere.
> 
> This is for fun, so it won't get a lot of editing, and it's purely junk food fiction. If you like pointing things out, from typos and spelling, to plot stuff that doesn't work or is confusing or whatever, knock yourself out. Ask anyone who's read my stuff: I adore those kinds of comments.
> 
> ...Maybe say a prayer before you dive into this, because damn.
> 
> *swigs kvas*

"I’m not Alina. But... I also am. I know her. I remember the big things that have happened to her, I know who she loves, what she hates and fears, the secrets she keeps." I look down at my small hand and flex it gently. "I know what it feels like to be in her skin. I've felt things that I know didn't come from me, they came from her. But I am not Alina Starkov."

I pause and look over at the woodstove. I see yellow and orange through the slats, as though a little sun is caged inside, trapped and forced to produce billowing heat for this one, tiny space. "I know _myself,"_ I say. "But I know her so well it's like I am her. Or was her. Maybe I'm her from another life. Another universe. All I know is that I'm here now, in this skin, in this world and I know... everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10/22/17: Got to the chapter in the story where the above little snapshot convo happens, changed this to match.


	2. Be Here

I freeze. Someone immediately rams into me from behind with a gruff, peevish bark to watch what I’m doing.

I am on the edge of a wide dirt road under a sun just starting its fall toward the horizon. As far as I can see are bodies in worn olive, packs and guns strapped to their backs, interspersed by carts and horses, all in a wide, rough line and headed in the same direction. Aside from the road, we are in a wide open space lined by trees in the distance on either side.

I should not be in a wide open space on the edge of a dirt road in a rough line of bodies dressed in olive and interspersed by carts and horses.

I step off to one side, out of the traffic. I am at the crest of a hill, and below is what is obviously a large camp. A large military camp, with a massive black tent nested toward the back. Past that is a truly colossal wall of black nothingness taken form and made into a living thing. I can feel it from here. It stretches as farther than I can see off to the left and right, and only the faintest ribbon of white is visible high, high above.

Holy mother of God.

“No fainting in the middle of the road,” says a deep, smooth voice close to my ear. I jump and my head snaps around. I am faced with vivid, bright blue eyes, cool brown hair, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw, all of which I have to look up to see. A warm, playful smile is on his face. “Come on. One foot in front of the other. You know how it’s done.” He puts a hand on my back and I jump again.

“What are you doing?” He laughs. “You look like you did when Ana Kuya caught us with the fete pie when we were twelve. I don't blame you, I still have the welts on my shins, but if you're having flashbacks to that _now_ , I think I might have some questions for you.”

“...Mal,” I say, my voice quiet and liquid, like a stream upset by rocks. It’s a question, but I can’t make it sound like one.

“Yyyeees?” He says “Why are we taking in the scenery, here? _I_ can get away with being late, but aren’t you already on thin ice with your C.O.?”

I huff a quiet laugh and look him up and down. “You _are_ handsome,” I allow, half talking to myself.

“...Thank you? Alina, are you feeling ok?”

I smile at him a little. “No.”

A rumble of primitive wheels carrying heavy weight and the pounding of horses’ hooves sounds behind me, and my eyes dart to toward it. I turn, and take Mal with me, gripping his arm so he’s facing away from the road. My own eyes go to the black carriage, pulled by four ink-dark sable horses, their coats shining in the sun. I make out a gilt window in the side of the polished, lacquered door, but the curtains are closed and I can’t see inside. I am not sorry for that.

The red coach next, pulled, impressively, by red-hued horses.

And then the blue. The bitch’s head is sticking out the window, and I hate it but she _is_ gorgeous. I have a sudden wish that our faces matched our insides.

Mal turns his head to follow my gaze and I take his face in firm hands and turn it back toward me. “Look at me,” I order, staring into his eyes, mine wide and intent. I have enough presence to notice that his are absolutely gorgeous, and rimmed with dark lashes. He is spectacularly handsome, and that is no small feat in a world where most people live malnourished, susceptible to disease, and overworked from the moment they can walk. Even his skin is clear. No wonder he’s so popular. Ass.

When the carriages are long in the distance, I glance to the side - her head has ducked back into the coach. I let my hands drop and close my eyes in relief, just for an instant.

Mal looks knocked ass over end.

“I thought I saw something in your eye,” I say coolly.

“...Alina, what--”

“I have to pee,” I interrupt flatly, turning abruptly and walking away from him, toward the tree line. He doesn’t follow.

This is arguably stupid - I am late, after all, aren’t I? But it’s not like consequences are going to matter. My life in the army ends tomorrow.

I could run. Desert. Try to find Nikolai and join his crew, maybe. I could deprive the Darkling of the toy he’s been waiting for for so long. But if I do any of that, every single person on the skiffs will die tomorrow. Mal. Alexei. The horrible excuse for a human that’s apparently my commander. I could make that sacrifice if it meant saving the world from the Darkling, but do I even want to do that? And if I have to be objective - though my stomach protests even thinking this - the lives lost tomorrow would be a small price to pay in exchange for the toll the Darkling would take on the world. But it isn’t that simple.

I consider my options as I walk. I consider what would likely happen for each, and what the costs would be. But what it comes down to in the end is that whoever I am, I don’t run away. And I don’t see a point in even trying. Part of me wants to, yes, to do anything to keep from facing this. But more of me knows better than to even try. I’m here. So why not be here?

It’s a weak reason, probably selfish, maybe more than a little naive. But it’s mine to make, and I feel like if anyone can make a difference then maybe, _maybe_ it will be me. Maybe I’m willing to kill myself if things go too badly. Maybe I’m hoping I can talk the Darkling into a less bloody version of his plans. If absolutely nothing else, what's happening right now is singular: I am walking into a trap laid hundreds of years ago, knowing not only that it's there, but what its every crack and crevice looks like. Whatever the case, I'm staying.

Tomorrow, I will enter treacherous, unpredictable ground, and a shadowed future.

Today, I might as well try and prepare.

 

* * * * *

 

I walk into the trees, far past the point when I can no longer see any field or parade of soldiers and supplies through their trunks. When I feel certain I’ve gone far enough, I walk for another fifteen minutes. I found I had a knife at my belt - it is dull, but I use it to make tiny nicks in the bark of every few trees so I can find my way back.

When I stop, it is dim as twilight under the canopy and considerably cooler than it had been in the open. Both are good for what I want to do. After all, I don’t have any of the blocks Alina had. I’m not afraid of this power. I know I’m going to be found, and I don’t have the desperate need to stay tied to Mal that she had. So maybe....

I shuck off my worn jacket and toss it to the ground not far from me, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. I feel my feet against the earth as if they have deep roots. I feel the air on my face and arms, on my hands, my neck. I listen for every small sound and take it in. I feel into a place in my belly and chest where a cord stretches out into the world around me. It is perception, connection, intuition. I think of the sunlight on my skin, even here in the dim chill. I imagine I can feel its warmth and welcome.   
  
I feel a tingle, almost a quaver, deep in my belly, and suddenly it's as if I am waking up. As if I am opening, down to every pore, and letting in life, like an old, long-neglected room having its windows and doors thrown open, fresh air entering for the first time in decades. Caked dust and wilted cobwebs are stirred, and light, _sunlight_ pours in, bouncing off every surface and growing stronger as the space were filled with mirrors. The feeling crests and swells exponentially--   
  
And then explodes out of me in a great burst, so intense that I cry out. My eyes fly open and shoot up in panic - is it passing the canopy? I can't tell, but even if it was, I couldn't make it dim. It is a joyous thing, as if I have been dead, and am only now waking up. As if this thing in me has been waiting for this acknowledgement, waiting to be given this life, all the years it has been bottled up. It nearly crushes something in me, but after a moment I manage to tamp it back down, swearing to it that this is not an end, but a beginning, that I will never strangle it or force it down again. But I can't be found yet, not yet.   
  
I manage to subdue it to a soft glow, sure and radiant in every sense, clinging to my skin, and only then does my mind seem to catch up to what's happening. For an instant, I’m afraid it will leave now that I’m seeing it, as if it's imaginary, not real, not physical, not as certain and literal as my bones or organs. It dims, but only barely, and after a moment of panic I realize that the lull is only because I was so afraid it would disappear.  _But,_ I realize, _it's mine._ “Mine.” It belongs to this body, and it wants to exist just as much as she does. It always _has_ existed just as much as she has, and has only ever lived as she allowed it. She shut it down, and she withered as a result, as she would have if she had stopped eating or insisted her liver cease its function. This power is somewhere between the body and the soul, somewhere between mindlessness and sentience. It's as if a hand of God had reached down and given her, given every Grisha, a way to be something  _more._

Her power. _My_ power. And that is precisely what it feels like. Not something alien, not something borrowed or stolen, but a creation of my own heart, my spirit, my soul. Whatever this is, whatever has happened or is going to happen, this power, this sunlight, is as much mine, as much me, as the air I am tasting or the sounds I am feeling or the solidity of the body I’m in. I stretch it like new muscles, seeing how deep and how wide it goes. How strong and heavy I can make it, how small, how light and lithe, how far it will stretch and how long it will last. I am careful to keep the light below the tops of the trees and to check that no one has come looking for me, but the only person short of a search party who would both bother _and_ be able to find me is Mal, and he will have been in camp for some time by now.

It isn’t hard to get the light to do simple things. Different forms, spheres, moving shapes. But even as I feel more and more alive and more energized, it is exhausting. I ask it to do something, and it does - up to a point. I can weave an ungainly skein of light through my fingers, but an image of a doe is little more than a quavering blob, and even that is difficult to hold for any length of time. I focus all my will and concentration and try the Cut, but unsurprisingly, I can't produce even a breeze.

I can call the light at will, at least, and it responds readily - it _wants_ to come, just as my eyes want to see, my muscles want to be used, my heart wants to beat.

It can't have been an hour when I stop, collect my jacket, and head back. Some instinctual part of myself wants to continue, but I don’t know my limits or how fast it will take to recover energy, and I can’t risk being too tired tomorrow.

The road is clear as I emerge from the trees, the march over. I make my way down to camp and hope that none of the tents I pass belong to the cartographers. I don’t even know what my superior officer looks like - he could stand in front of me and I wouldn’t know I was supposed to be simpering out some apology for my absence.

It’s easy enough to find the mess tent, at least - it’s massive and loud, the food smells are strong when I near, and the traffic in and out is boisterous and heavy. I walk in through the wide opening, its worn canvas flaps tied open, and balk at the noise and the crush of bodies. The food line is easy enough to pick out, as is the order of operations: get a tray, metal and dented beyond any hope of sitting levelly. Add to it a bowl, a plate, cutlery, and a cup. Some people take one, others two. I assume the second is for tea, because this military is too cheap to spring for anything like booze to offer soldiers the night before they enter Ravka's living nightmare.

The line shuffles along, the ritual identical to the one likely repeated in every institution in every nation: hand dish over, get food dropped on or in, advance. The most recognizable thing on my plate is a large chunk of what looks like either very good bread, or very tough bread. I feel safe guessing the latter. There is a thick soup that is disturbingly close to gray, and I assume - hope - the chunks in it are some sort of root vegetable.

At the end, I fill my cup with water. I take a drink and immediately spew it back out on reflex. It is _foul._ And, I note, actually looking at it, brown. Ignoring the stares I’m getting while I wipe away what’s dribbling down my chin but feeling my face heat all the same, I look around for somewhere to toss the water. Eventually I settle for the floor off to one side where there’s no traffic. It’s all dirt, anyway. I help myself to tea.

When I turn around, Mal is easy to find. He draws the eye, in fact; the largest cluster of people by far is around him, as are the most smiles and energy, and the loudest laughs. He sits at the center of the group, a happy smile reaching up to clear eyes as he tells some story or joke, and the long table erupts into a roar of laughter.

I cant my head; this feeling, it’s mesmerizing. I don’t know if it’s that this body has spent so many years loving him, or if it’s because I know who he is and who he can become in the end, or if it’s the same magnetic affect he obviously has on everyone else, but it feels good to look at him like this. It feels warm and familiar. It’s a long moment before I realize that it hurts, too.

Someone next to him has noticed my motionless, uninterrupted stare and elbows Mal. The man whispers something in his ear and nods toward me, a grin on his face. When Mal looks up, I hold his gaze for just a moment, then give him a soft, almost sad smile and turn away.

I walk toward the exit hoping to high heaven no one’s going to try and stop me from taking mess hall supplies out of mess. Either I don’t get caught, I look too dour and unhealthy to bother with, or I’m not breaking any rules, because I get to the exit fine. Just outside, though, a young man jogs up when he catches sight of me. He has mussed, sandy blonde hair, is wonderfully gangly, and has a delicate smudge of ink under one side of his jaw. The skin around it is red as if he's tried to scrub it off.

“Where have you been?” He asks tightly, a little crease between his brows. “The Senior Cartographer is furious!”

“Alexei,” I say, that same statement-question I used with Mal, that same safe, bland, hidden tone.

“He said if I see you I should tell you that you're to report an hour early in the morning, and you owe him double your assignment by then, and ‘it had better be good.’" He seems to see me for the first time, because the crease between his brows deepens. "Are you feeling ok? Where are you going with your food?” His eyes widen a little as he takes in my tray. “And since when do you eat so much?”

He has stone-green eyes with tiny flecks of brown-gray in them. I smile at him almost sadly. I have no intention of letting him die tomorrow, but all the same, I know what he went through in another life, in some other universe, the horror of being ripped away from the skiff, of his own strength not being enough to save him, of watching safety fade into the black.

“I figured I’d get some time to myself before the big crossing tomorrow,” I say quietly. I know my gaze on him is too intense, but I don’t care. I don’t have to care. I won’t have consequences to face with anyone here.

“Uh... oh. Ok. I’ll see you in the bunk I guess? I got here with some extra sketches, you can use them tomorrow.”

I smile at him with an inappropriate amount of warmth. "Thank you, Alexei. Have a good meal, ok?”

He gives me an odd look. “Sure, Alina. You too.”

I head away from camp, meandering south where it skirts close to a line of trees. Knowing I’m a stranger here, not really part of the group, not subject to the rules and not needing to bother learning them, makes it easy to look as if I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, going exactly where I’m supposed to go. Few people take any notice of me, and when they do, I pretend I don’t see.

I settle far behind the treeline and eat slowly, feeling every piece of grit in the stew, tasting every hint of sweetness left in the stale bread and every note of bitterness in the oversteeped tea. I see the fight this woman has had to keep a healthy weight. A fight she has lost, by the way my clothes bag and the slightness of even the inch of wrist I see under my sleeve as I move. I feel tired and worn out. Perhaps it’s because of the march to Kribursk, but I don’t think so. This isn't the tiredness of exertion, it's the tiredness of having lived too long starved of more than food. It's the energy level of a body that has long given up trying to do anything more than literally keep itself alive.

While I chew, I begin to play with invisibility, figuring it will take concentration, but not much energy. Partway through my bread, I’m able to make my foot flicker out of sight, just for an instant. As I work through the meal, that instant stretches into a second, then two, until eventually my boot is “gone” longer than not. Which isn't exactly right; my foot doesn’t disappear - there is a rough, hard to see shape where I know it sits - but seeing soil where I know my appendage should be is... well, disconcerting. Exciting, but very odd.

Next I try to make one chunk of vegetable on my tray disappear. Then the bowl, then the tray and everything on it, then my hand as it moves from my plate to my mouth. The trick is hardly flawless, but given that this body hadn’t ever used its power before an hour or two ago, I'm inclined to be thrilled. For God’s sake, I control _sunlight._ I realize my face is split with a wide smile, and I am quietly giggling as if I can’t hold all the joy in.

I wiggle back against a slim trunk and try to see how much control I have out of the gate. Calling light without heat, or vice versa, isn't possible, but I have a little more luck with colors - gold and white are easy, and purple and pale blue and a full red aren't too difficult, but everything gets harder from there. I make soft glows and bright ones, gradual appearances and flashbombs, diffuse light, and dense, concentrated globes of it.

All of it is intuitive. I _feel_ what I want, not just ask, but feel, and the light moves to make it happen. It's ungainly, but not any different from an arm, or my lips or legs. When I come up against something difficult, it doesn’t seem like it can’t do what I’m asking so much as it does that I’m in its way. The mechanics are there, but the application is... it's like finding a new muscle and immediately asking for fine motor control from it. I'm moving as if in the open air, but the muscle is telling me that in reality, I'm trying to slog through chest-high mud.

When the last piece of food is in my mouth, I close my eyes and lean back. I remember lessons in the small science: when you break everything down to its smallest parts, everything is within everything else. Light is in me, in the soil, in the heart of the tree trunks around me. _Are we not all things?_ I remember the feeling of that dusty room opening, of unlocking a door in myself and immediately feeling like I had been a deflated balloon and I was finally being filled up, strong and sturdy and tall and whole and _right._

I think I can feel it. I'm certain I can - the light all around me, hovering in the air, existing, being. I even think I feel it in the tree I'm leaning against. But this is so new, and rather than being able to ask it to do anything - as if I would know where to start - it's as if I'm saying hello to it, acknowledging it, and it's doing the same in return. “Hello, Sun Summoner. Yes, I’m here. I’m everywhere. I am always with you.”

I realize I am smiling again as I open my eyes. I look up toward the canopy as if I could see those infinitely small particles I had felt.

Until twilight begins to set in, I spend the rest of my time trying to prepare for tomorrow, if it is even possible to really do so. I discover that maintaining a dome of light of any decent size is well beyond my stamina, especially given that there will be at least two skiffs to cover tomorrow, probably more. I settle on bright spheres of light. If they’re not _too_ large, I seem to be able to hold them fine. We’ll be a half hour out when the attack hits. I can only hope - pray - I’ll have a half hour in me.

I am not fond of relying on hope. It is the shakiest, most fickle of plans, and uncertainty is the last thing I can allow after tonight.

 

* * * * *

 

I’m sitting on the worn, rickety stoop of the tiny cabin I share with nine others. My back is against the wall, arms folded comfortably, legs stretched out in front of me with one ankle crossed over the other. I'm looking up at the stars; I blew the lantern out that hangs from the wall over my head, and the only good-sized fires are behind my cabin. I have never seen so many stars, and looking up at them feels like a gift and a massive, tense breath in all at once. For me, the whole world changes tomorrow. I will never be a free woman, a no one, looking up at the sky again.

I know he might not come. I wasn’t in the dining tent looking miserable at dinner, but I figure with the pending crossing and my odd behavior, I’d be safe putting money on a visit. Which is getting difficult, because my tiredness - this body's tiredness - is catching up to me, and I feel like a healthy person would feel if they hadn't slept in days. It makes it easy to ignore the tightness in my chest, but harder to enjoy the view.

I have my jacket pulled tight around myself and my knees gathered up to my chest against the cold by the time three figures approach. They stop at the diminutive fire that simmers well out from the front of my bunk. One figure is freakishly tall and his hair is so red I can pick it out even in the starlight, and he and the slightest of the trio are stumbling drunkenly. Michael and Dubrov. I wonder what they'll make of their lives, if they're able to live them out this time.

Mal waves them off and heads over to me. My eyes are carefully on his friends as Mal sits next to me, so close that our arms and legs are pressed against one another.

“He puke in your boots yet?” I ask, indicating Dubrov with a tilt of my chin.

Mal chuckles quietly, and I can see his breath puff into the dark air. “No, but the night is young.”

I hum in acknowledgement, and then I can’t help myself. “Speaking of, what are you doing here? Not going to see anyone tonight?” I ask lightly. “Get in one last celebration of life before we stare death in the face again?”

He looks at me a moment, and I can feel him searching for something. But all he does is shrug one strong, broad shoulder. “I was thinking about it, but I'd rather be here.”

I nearly snort. How little it would take for that not to be true.

“No one special caught your eye?” I ask, my voice carefully disinterested, as if this is a perfectly normal exchange for us. It seems a reasonable question, anyway. It isn’t like we’re normally stationed in Kribursk.

“No.” There’s something odd in his voice. I assume it’s only in reaction to what must seem to him very strange behavior on my part.

It’s hard not to smile, to sigh in relief at his answer - he missed her passing in the coach, which means she missed him, too, and knowing her, she probably hasn’t set foot outside of the pristine comfort of the Grisha pavilion since she arrived. I could crow to the moon.

“So do you want to tell me, or should I guess?” Mal asks.

I look over at him for the first time, and it is absolutely unfair the way the firelight plays with the angles of his face, the way it warms his skin and, impossibly, makes his eyes look even more blue. I’m so arrested, all I can manage is a distant “What?”

“What’s wrong,” he clarifies.

I huff a laugh and lean my head against his shoulder. It happens so fast, so automatically I don’t even have time to question it. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side, resting his cheek on the top of my head, and this is so natural, so comfortable, that I almost have to wonder that we _weren't_ anything more than friends.

“We’re going to be fine, you know,” he says. “We’ve done this seven times now without even a scratch. Besides, if they get too close, we can just feed Mikhael to them and make a clean escape.”

I chuckle dryly again and turn my face into his shirt. He smells like earth and home, like a hearth and a welcoming set of arms wrapped around me. I figure that must be the habit of the body, but I don’t care. I’ve spent five minutes with the man and I can already see why she was hopeless for him. I’m sure he’s an utter shit, too, but I don’t think I’ve ever once felt like I belonged anywhere the way I do right now, with him, sitting in the cold on a step so ancient I’ll probably have to spend a quarter of an hour picking splinters out of the ass of my trousers when I get up. I think I understand how he felt when he said he would give anything to be roughing it in the mountains of Tsibeya again, just Alina and him.

I look down and see the thick scar on my palm. I run a finger across it absently and feel something in myself harden and tense at what I’m about to do. “Have you ever asked me where I got this?”

He’s already looking down at it, following the motion of my finger. “Sure. I think you asked me how you were supposed to keep track of every scrape when you’re as clumsy as you are.”

I laugh a little. “Of course I did.”

I take a deep breath and pull away from him to sit up. “When we were fifteen, you went out on a hunting trip. When you got back, I was working in the kitchen, near a window of course, like I always did, mending broken cups. I saw your party coming back and I just... everything stopped.” I feel a smile spreading over my lips and reaching up to my eyes. “I ran out to meet you and you picked me up and twirled me around.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was still holding a piece of glass. I was clutching it so tightly in my hand, it dug in so deep, that it gave me this. A cut that never healed. Which was pretty fitting. Because that was when I realized that everything had changed. I didn’t feel it biting into my hand because of how strong that feeling was.”

“What feeling?”

I pause, then look over at him. I don’t know what I’m searching for in his face, or if I find it. I lean back against the cold building and look away again so I don’t have to watch his reaction. “That was when I realized I was in love with you, Mal.”

I know Malyen Oretsev. I know he loves Alina Starkov. He’s just an idiot who has never thought to question who she really is to him. Because of that, and because I don’t have the paralyzing fear of losing him, I don’t have to be afraid of telling him. I’m afraid of hurting him, that this will make it harder for him when I’m gone, but there is a peace in the admission, and I wonder how much of our pain is stored in our bodies, because with the confession, the truth, I feel as though muscles relax that have been clenched for a decade or more. As if I know peace I haven’t ever known.

He is motionless as an ancient statue. I can see him watching me out of the corner of my eye.

“You need to know,” I say, a serious thread entering my tone, “Everything’s going to change tomorrow.”

“...What do you mean?” His voice is quiet. Hesitant and lost and maybe a little afraid. I can hardly fault him for that. I wonder how long it will take him to figure out that he loves her, too. Selfishly, I hope it isn’t before tomorrow.

I shake my head a little. “I can’t give you details.” I pause. I knew I was going to do this, but I didn’t plan out what to say. I look up at him. His face is intense, a mask. “I believe in you,” I say sincerely. “You’re a good person and I love you and I always will. But don’t look for me when I’m taken--"

 _"Taken?_  Alina, wha--"

I got on as if he hasn't spoken, my voice just as calm as it was before. "Tend to your life. And don’t help him find the stag. It won’t be what it sounds like, it won’t help me.

“When you see me next, I won’t look like myself, not to you. I might even look like his pet. Things _will_ be different, but don’t believe what you see, believe what you _know._ Have faith in that, have trust in it.”

“What--”

I look away quickly. “Things are going to change,” I repeat. “You’re going to feel like a shit. You’re going to feel like it was right in front of you,” I breathe, “and you missed it, all these years.” I pause. It feels like Mal isn’t even breathing as he stares at me. That makes sense. What doesn’t is the fact that it feels like I might start crying.

"I never said anything,” I go on smoothly, kindly, seriously. “You didn’t have a reason to see me, and I never gave you one. We drifted apart more and more, and I was too afraid of losing what little I thought we might have left to risk it. It was easier to love you, and to hurt as I watched you with all,” I stretch out the word, “those other women over the years.”

Mal’s throat bobs so dramatically in the firelight that I don’t even have to look at him to see it. “What's changed?” His voice is so quiet that if it’s upset or unsteady, I can’t tell. But I know it must be. He's moved on with his life since they joined the army. He has grown, as his charisma and his looks and his universal likability have allowed. Mal became a king in his own right. He was an unwanted child who had nothing, and when we were conscripted, suddenly no one could get enough of him. It isn't a surprise he's wandered, that the time he spent with her grew more scarce and infrequent. But he held on to a piece of her in his core. His actions may not have shown it, because he hasn't yet had the cause or the perspective to realize it - he is so young - but Alina is everything to him.

I take my head from the wall, look down at my still-upturned palm, and say, “Everything. What’s coming.”

I sigh, a deep, heavy thing, and for some reason I feel afraid of what I’m about to do. I'm afraid to leave, to lose even one second with him, to not hear what he might say. But that wasn’t why I did this, and even as I realize that, improbably, I love him too, he isn’t mine. I didn’t grow up with him. I didn’t earn him. The way I love him is probably not the way Alina does, did. Stepping forward on this line would be a lie, would be cruel, would be heartless theft. I have more qualms than the Darkling.

It’s like Mal's stare is a weighted blanket.

“I can’t tell you more,” I say. “Just... don’t forget what I’ve said. Especially about the stag.” I take his hand and give it a squeeze, then pull back before he can choose not to return the gesture.

I lean over and press a lingering kiss to his cheek. As I pull back and stand, I whisper in his ear, “I love you.” As I open the door, I say, “I always have, and I always will.”

I am sealed back in the cabin before he can gather himself enough to reply, my back against the door and my heart thudding in my ears.

Some time during the night, I wake from a deep sleep to a worry niggling at me, but it takes me a while to figure out what it might be. I wonder if Mal is sleeping alright. I hope so, but I can’t see him having rested well after what I laid at his feet. I wonder if I should be worried that he hasn’t come knocking, but I have to remind myself that I just turned his entire life upside down.

And then I realize what's bothering me: I _did_ just turn Mal’s world upside down. Mal, who really likes sex and has no problem getting it. Sex, which is a fantastic way to forget about a huge upset for a little while. I swear vigorously under my breath.

I nearly shuck on my boots and go outside in nothing but my nightwear just to feel distracted. To walk off the feeling in the cold, to look at the world through a lense that is going to be shattered tomorrow. I tell myself I should get back to sleep, that I need my energy. But what actually stops me is the irrational fear that I'll see or hear some sign that he found that distraction after all.   
  
I remind myself again, angrily, that he isn't mine to feel jealous over. I put a hand to my stomach and try to get some sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12/16/18: Touch-ups, tweaks for character & quality


	3. Dawn

Apparently Starkov drools, because when Alexei wakes me, there’s a wet spot on my pillow. We’re the last people in the bunk, every other bed is neatly made, and he is dressed. And standing carefully out of arms’ reach. Apparently Starkov is also a hitter when she’s woken. I assume she either has a reputation for it, or the poor kid has learned the hard way.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” he says. “Mess is almost over, but I snuck you some fruit. It’s extra sweet this morning.”

“Thanks, kid,” I huff. Then I ask around a mouthful of apple - every bit as sweet as promised, unfortunately - “When do we leave?”

“Not long. The supplies are almost loaded. People are already gathering at the dry dock.”

“...Well.” I swallow the bite of fruit, loudly and slowly. “Alright, then. Thanks for waking me. I’ll see you out there.” I give him an unsturdy smile and get an odd look in return.

“Sure,” he says hesitantly. He’s eyeing me like I look off. Or, more probably, like I seem off. I’m suddenly glad I’m about to be taken away from everyone who’s ever known “me.” I’d be hard pressed to survive otherwise. A cartographer with no cartography skills, a soldier with no knowledge of the military, or friends or companions or commanding officers.

Ever the optimist.

Come to it, how do people bathe here, or brush their teeth? What do they do for deodorant? Or their monthlies?

“Hey, Alexei,” I say, stopping him at the doorway.

“Yeah?”

“Promise me something?”

His brows lift, but he just says “Sure.”

“Stay close to me on the skiffs. Please. Really close.”

He smiles wryly. “You’d think it wasn’t me who’d never been on the Unsea before.”

“Promise,” I say seriously.

“...Ok, Alina. Sure.”

I look at him somberly until he finally turns and leaves.

 

* * * * *

 

The crowd at the docks is larger than I would have guessed. There have to be at least two or three hundred people. I suppose when you have to risk a lightless hellscape of monsters, you want to do it as infrequently as possible. Still, don’t more people make more noise, more smell? Smarter minds than mine have figured it out over the centuries, I suppose.

I hover at the back of the crowd; about half the people have already boarded, it looks like, and Alexei was right: each skiff is densely packed with crates and sacks as well as passengers and heavily-armed soldiers, their faces sober and postures tight and alert. I didn’t expect the scars on all of them, but I probably should have. This is not a gentle world, and a hundred times less so when your job is crossing the Fold time and again.

I don’t see Mal anywhere, and I’m caught between relief and unease. He must have boarded already. I feel a little tight at the idea that he may have gone out of his way to avoid me all morning, but of course, I did the exact same thing.

Here and there, I see the bright, deep kefta of the Grisha, lush and clean and fine and clearly expensive. The vast majority are a rich, deep blue close to midnight, and the embroidery at the collars and ends of their sleeves stands out vividly. There are only two Corporalki I can make out from here - Heartrenders - and both of them seem to be directing the flow of supplies.

Every one of the Grisha is as attractive as Mal, or more. I wonder how much of people’s fear of them is based in jealousy. Coupled with whatever power gives them their good genetics, they’ve been raised with full stomachs and clean surroundings, so their forms are beautiful, yes, but their hair is also shining and thick, their skin clear and luminous, and almost every one of them is taller than everyone else here. The men are more muscled, the women bear more curves. I wonder that they aren’t coveted as wives by every monarch and lord in the world.

I hang back at a distance from the edge of the crowd. People are somber, fidgety. One or two are overly boisterous, trying to distract themselves from nerves. Many people are staring at the Grisha while trying to appear like they’re not. For their part, the Grisha seem to be used to it and pay it no attention.

An officer bellows, “Last reminder to check yourselves for cuts! If you have even a nick or you’re a woman and it’s your time, _do not_ set foot on my barges, you’ll have to wait for the next crossing. Being in a hurry won’t do you any good when you call a flock of volcra to us out there. Follow the rules, keep quiet, and we’ll have a safe, orderly trip!”

I’d had a lot of time to think the night before as I stared at the bottom of the bed above mine. I almost decided to skip this entire thing and just walk up to the Grisha pavilion and start glowing. I’d warned Mal something was going to happen today. It might be cruel to do it that way, he might wonder how long I had known, why I had kept it from him, why I had handed myself over, a dozen other whys. What it came down to, the reason I was standing on the trampled earth at the edge of a gray sand shore in front of a wall of living, lightless fullness, was the fact that if I just handed myself over, this crossing would still happen. Here, now, today, at the appointed time, and that meant that everyone here would--

“She lives,” a voice says next to my ear.

I jump with a loud gasp and whirl around with a cry of “Jesus Christ!”

Heads turn curiously and next to me, Mal arches a brow and gives me a half-cocked grin that redoubles the racing of my heart. I feel my cheeks flush and curse this body.

“That’s a new one,” he says with mirth and affection. “Where’d you pick it up?”

“What?” I ask breathlessly. “New what?”

“‘Cheesus Krist.’ I assumed it was some kind of curse.”

“Oh. Yeah. I... heard it in a dream” I mutter. “Where the hell did you come from? I figured you were already loaded up with your boys.”

“And leave you to have fun without me? I don’t think so.” His voice turns falsely light. “I’d almost started to think you weren’t coming. I haven’t seen you all morning.”

“I seriously considered it,” I say mulishly. I am staring ahead, shuffling along toward what feels like the gaping, hot mouth of some gigantic monster waiting to swallow me, and refusing to look at him. “I overslept.”

“That explains the hair.” My hands snap up to it, looking for tangles and flyaways that I had missed. It is so dry and ratty, there are probably ten of them. I can hear a smile in his voice when he goes on. “Ah, but you wouldn’t let me go through this alone. Who’d watch my back?”

“One of the hundred and twenty women and fifteen or so men here who are hopelessly in love with you.”

I immediately realize what I’ve said and feel my flush deepen. An impressive string of swearing runs through my head, stopped from getting out by a rapidly twitching muscle in my jaw.

“And you said my fan club would never come in handy.”

“That does not sound like something I would say,” I retort flatly. Why does he seem so calm, so unaffected? What is he doing?

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Walking to certain doom. What does it look like?”

“...Right. Because that’s what I meant,” I mutter peevishly, half to myself.

He doesn’t say anything else until I am about to step onboard one of the large, flat-bottomed craft. He puts a hand on my arm and stops me. When I turn to look at him, the easy, carefree veneer is gone.

“About what you said. I’m... I love you, Alina. You know that, right? How is just-- I never though, I mean I didn’t expect that-- There was--” His face contorts into a silent growl before he goes on. “I’m... a little lost. I don’t really know....” His cheeks color slightly. The sight is arresting.

Was he always so eloquent, or should I be really flattered?

I take pity on him. “It’s ok, Mal. Really. I dropped a lot on your lap last night. And I know I’m not exactly... I mean, you're you and I'm... well. And that was before I got into all the cryptic shit. Stuff.”

“Yeah, what w--”

“Hurry it up, you two,” someone, an officer I assume, barks at us. “Oretsev, what are you doing? You’re a veteran, don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.”

“No, sir. Sorry.” Mal nods for me to go ahead and board. Aside from the officer, we are the last two left. A dockworker ropes off the back of the skiff as a makeshift railing, and my heart sets off like a hummingbird.

“Is it always this terrifying?” I whisper to Mal.

“More or less. Listen, Alina, about what you said. I’m sorry if I ever... I mean, the way I am, I’m sorry if....” He looks like he’s trying so hard. He’s uncomfortable, he’s floundering, but he’s trying. I’m a little less unfairly angry at him for the way he is.

“...Are you trying to apologize for being a giant manwhore? Because if you are, it’s adorable, and I really appreciate it.”

He laughs, his eyes crinkling and some of the uncertainty leaving his face. “Manwhore? Whoever you got this stuff from, I’m insulted you didn’t invite me.” He looks down at me, smiling, his vivid blue eyes picking up light from the sun at my back. His smile falters and his gaze drops to my lips. It darts away quickly and I see confusion on his face.

“Just... promi--”

“Alina!” A voice behind him calls. I glare pending, bloody murder in its direction until I see Alexei pushing his way through the crowd. “Saints, where were you? I waited as long as I could.”

“Well, you found me,” I say. “Promise kept. Now stick to my side like we’re conjoined twins, or I’ll box your ears.”

“Like we’re what?”

I make a disgusted sound, but it’s not directed at him. “Neverm--”

We are pushed away from the drydock just then and I sway at the unexpected movement. Without meaning to, my hand darts out and finds Mal’s, clutching it for dear life.

“Alina,” he asks, “are you ok? You’re white as a ghost.”

“Are you sure you’ve done this before?” Alexei asks.

“Oh, sure,” I say weakly. “Scads of times. Loads. I’m an old pro.”

Mal leans in and asks quietly, “Is that why you’re trying to break every bone in my hand?”

I look up at him in surprise and utter an apology. I try to let go and give him his hand back, but he just grabs on and twines his fingers with mine. I feel myself flush again, and I can’t look at him.

Alexei looks from me, to Mal, and back to me, and confusion turns to some sort of sly little grin.

“Cram it,” I growl quietly at him.

“Consider it crammed, boss,” he says a little hollowly. I’m not the only one who’s afraid.

I glare at him until swirling black vapors like the disturbed edges of a thick bank of fog start to creep in and lick against everything. His face and shoulders and chest, my feet, the deck, the large sails in front of us.

Mal’s brows pull together. “Alina, you’re shaking.”

“No I’m not,” I half snap. The darkness is thickening. “You’re shaking. Or there was a minor earthquake and I’m just more sensitive than you because you’re a giant clod. Now shut up, I’m trying to be a good example for my underling.”

I expect some sort of reply from Alexei, but when I glance at him I see he has gone quiet and pale. Wordlessly, I reach over and take his hand in mine. He darts a glance at me and gives a quick twitch of his lips. It is the last thing I see as everything goes black.

I feel Mal lean in and say, so quiet that only I can hear, “We’ll talk on the other side, I promise. Just... swear that no matter what happens, we don’t lose this.” His hand squeezes mine, and I nod mutely, then realize that even inches from me he can’t see it and say, “I will if you will.” My voice is infinitely more steady than the rest of me.

We move over the sand in a void of nothing, and it _is_ alive, I can feel it. It isn’t just an absence of light, it is a presence, a place and thing that exists in its own right, a fullness like the space inside a home or the peace of a forest. It is complete and settled and almost aware. It is cold and tense and menacing. But that could just be me waiting for the flock of hundreds of man-sized, winged predators for whom we are the sole food source.

I let my attention fray, reaching for whatever light there is to be found here. I tug at it so it’s nearby, but am careful not to collect so much that it’s visible. I have been terrified that I wouldn’t be able to summon here, that it took Alina years of repression being shattered and the desperation to save Mal to scare the volcra away. Lightless though this place is, it also... isn’t. _Everything is contained within everything else. That is the essence of the Small Science._ As far as I know, that meant atoms. So if I am feeling atoms and turning them into light.... I let myself vanish thinking about that for a good five minutes. The implications are staggering, but also somehow not surprising, as if something I’ve always known. Mountains are atoms and every atom is a mountain. The large in the small, the microscopic in the macroscopic.

It’s impossible to tell how fast or slow we’re moving. The only sound as we glide along is the hush of the bottoms of the skiffs moving over the sand, and the occasional near-silent whispered order. I can’t even hear anyone breathing. No one cries, no one talks through their nervousness. This is survival instinct at its most alive, like a crowd of grouse gone still.

I am surprised how much time seems to pass before I pick up the distant beating of massive wings. Alexei hears it next, and Mal takes his hand from mine to quietly ready the rifle strapped to his back. I hear other men and women doing the same all around me. There is rustling I can’t identify, I tell Alexei to get down, and someone in charge whispers, “Be ready.” I see a tiny yellow spark in the blackness as one of the Inferni chips his flint.

I have to wait. I know that. It’s just hard to remind myself why it’s so important.

The beating grows louder and more numerous and Alexei starts to pray. I hear chittering from the air. “You’re getting out of this, Alexei,” I promise in a low voice.

It’s so dark I don’t need to close my eyes to concentrate, but it’s made difficult anyway by how hard it is to keep my balance when I can’t see anything. I reach out for that reserve of light I have kept my attention on. Out of nowhere, a guttural shriek pierces the air as someone is carried off of one of the other barges. I panic, wondering if the volcra are quieter than I assumed.

“Burn!” someone orders, and the air is filled with the clack and scrape of flint striking stone. Rippling blooms of Grisha flame erupt at each side of every skiff, and I have to blink against the sudden brightness, some of yellow, some white, one even looks purple.

 _Just a moment more, just a moment more,_ I coach myself, and it is a sheer force of will not to unleash everything I have. Until I see the first of them, and learn what a force of will actually is. They are gray and weathered and too thin. Large, sightless eyes, stunted muzzles with rows of teeth like a shark. Malformed. Each wing is longer than I am tall, and I can feel the wind they make as more and more converge on our skiffs. The beats of them are so strong, the columns of flame sent out by the Grisha are buffeted. The volcra scream as they are struck with bullets and consumed by fire. I see one drop out of the air without a wound, and realize it must be the work of a Heartrender. My guess is confirmed when the wings of another nearby snap, sending that volcra down screeching.

I take a breath and in an instant, the light converges and is about to bloom to life. And then everything goes to hell.

“Alina, get down!” Mal bellows, and I react without thinking, just in time to miss the barrel of his rifle as it swings over my head and fires. My ears are ringing, but I can still hear an inhuman scream right behind me, and a loud thud as a volcra falls to the deck, bleeding. It is massive, at least seven feet tall, and it scrabbles over the wood toward me. A whining sort of sound comes from my throat, a quiet, muffled noise of terror. Another deafening rifle blast, and a bloody hole appears where its eye had been.

I whip around to Mal-- And see a horrifying face, much larger than a human’s, an inch behind his as a volcra sweeps in, wraps its arms around Mal, and launches itself back into the air.

I _scream_ his name and surge forward, blind to the chaos around me, to the volcra descending on militiamen, targeting the inferni and the soldiers with guns who are desperately trying to protect them, to smaller ones carrying off passengers near the edges of the skiff. A flame billows out and I see him, twisting around and gouging at the creature’s eyes. It reels and Mal slips from its grasp, but it catches him, digging long talons deep into the flesh of his arm to get a hold. I make it to the railing just as the light dies out and he disappears. _”Mal!”_

Fire from one of the other skiffs lights him up again, dim and brief, like a heartbeat, and I see the creature fighting to stay in the air as Mal struggles, its mouth open impossibly wide and descending toward Mal’s head. Rage and fear and desperation ignite in me like a spark to propane. Power crushes outward and I bring my arm up through the air as if it is the upstroke of a sword. The motion is everything I am and everything I will ever be.

Thunder cracks the air and an arc of light, a perfect, slim blade of glimmering, blazing white-gold lances the air, almost too fast to follow, and the volcra stutters, surprised and confused until it begins to slide apart, an line all the way through it from shoulderblade to opposite hip glowing faintly. Mal plummets to the ground, but I have already vaulted over the railing and am running to him as fast as I can over the fine, dead sand.

I throw a hand out, keeping it close enough to my body that the motion shouldn't be obvious in the gusts of fire. A light, vibrant and warm and safe, blossoms over his head. He is crumpled on the ground, but moving, if only just. The moment I reach him I whirl around and, the second the fires die down throw both arms out, calling everything I have to a glaring emanation over the center of the convoy. There is a hush just before it forms, as if all sound has been sucked away, and then a crack that shakes the ground as it explodes into being. Volcra recoil and shriek in pained, animal sounds. I see some of them burned alive, others blistered as if the light was acid on their skin. The people aboard the skiffs shout and cover their eyes, cower to the decks and cling to the railing as the sails snap, as their hair and clothes are buffeted by the blast, by the heat of a summer sun.

It is not like practice yesterday. It is not a steady thing inside of my control. It is still exhilarating, even under the circumstances, as if a spark has ignited under my skin. But it is a wild thing, as feverish and dilated as the rest of me. And as fast as I feel it bringing me alive, it is like trying to draw great cups of water from half an inch of water that's swirling down a drain even as I'm collecting it. I flag immediately and release the light, condensing it into three glittering, gold-white suns, one floating just above the heads of the passengers, on each skiff’s short mast as if impaled. I hunch down and pull one of Mal’s arms over my shoulders. “Can you walk?” I murmur.

He nods mutely, barely, and I help him stumble to his feet, one hand out farther from my body than I would like to maintain the bright glare. One of Mal's eyes is swollen shut, and blood from a cut on his head is running into the other. Neither exertion is easy; Starkov really is weak. But I'm worried to the point of another adrenaline surge over how hurt Mal must be that he doesn't even try to ask about what just happened.

By the time we make it back to the skiffs, every face is turned toward us.

“Well?” I snap when no one moves. “Are you going to help him, or would you like the star tracker of the First Army to stay behind and play cards with the things while you make it back to safety?”

Alexei pushes his way through the crowd and slips under the railing. His face is nearly bloodless and he is trembling visibly, but he takes Mal’s other arm, and between the two of us, we’re able to get at least part of him up on deck, though it pulls an involuntary sound of pain from him. Two soldiers hurry forward and heft him up by his shirt. I try to hold back silent insults at how long it took, reminding myself that these people have all almost just died, and then seen the impossible.

Alexei is given a hand up, but I'm left alone until one of the Heartrenders pushes through and offers hers. I am bloody, and I honestly can’t tell if any of it or all of it is mine. When I look up, it is to see the butts of no fewer than eight rifles leveled at me.

Any goodwill disappears from my countenance and I glower at the faces of the men behind them. “Really?” I say, my voice sharp and cold. “Maybe save whatever this is for later so we can get back to shore. Unless you’d like to find out exactly how long I can keep this up. And maybe get the guns out of my face so I can concentrate. I haven’t really done this before.”

It’s a mixed bag that they do as I ask. Sure, I can concentrate better. But it also means I can think about what I’ve just done.

 

* * * * *

 

I am so exhausted and utterly spent by the time our skiff bumps into the shore that I have collapsed to it, hunched over, and all my energy and focus is going into keeping my arm up and holding on to the light to the exclusion of anything else. I refuse to move until Healers get here. I want to say, “until they get to Mal,” but if by some small, idiot miracle I haven’t made it obvious yet that he matters to me, I’m hardly going to add fuel to the fire. An officer threatens me to get me moving (“Shoot me,” I snap. “See how well that goes for you.”), and when that fails, orders his men to haul me away by force. I just keep setting off flash bombs until they can’t see well enough to stand straight, let alone put hands on me.

The instant a Healer is working Mal, I force myself to my feet and, after stumbling from exhaustion, make to head for the Grisha pavilion. He was badly hurt in the fall; he isn't cognizant enough to do more than look blearily in my direction, his brow wrinkled. The officer grabs at me and orders me to stop, and because I am who I am, I can’t shake him off. I give him what is apparently an impressively threatening black look - to be fair, he thinks I’m a witch. Between that and a request to the Grisha woman who helped me aboard the skiff and now stands nearby, staring with several others from the Second Army, to keep him away from me (“I have someone I need to see,” I say with an open look in the direction of their pavilion), I manage to set off on my own. I am either filthy and bloody enough and bowed enough, or my face is dire enough that no one bothers me as I walk.

I don’t know why, if it is some kind of stress reaction, but I'm calm as I approach the wall of shimmering black topped with its four flags. An absent part of my mind wonders if he will change his if we happen to join forces. If we do, and he thinks of me as any more than a toy soldier, that is.

I glance from the large, unamused, menacing oprichniki on the left of the entrance to the large, unamused, menacing oprichniki on the right. Their uniforms are surprisingly drab and primitive-looking. But then, they are only ‘lowly otkazat’sya.’ Perhaps there's some symbolism about focusing on the job in them or something.

“...I don’t suppose you’d just let me in if I asked nicely?”

“Leave,” oprichnik one says at the same moment his partner asks, “Why are you here?”

I decide on honesty. It isn’t like a lie would help, anyway. “To see your boss.”

Oprichnik two is not amused. “Go,” with a jut of his chin.

I look up at him, then over to his partner. “Okay,” I say drily, with a tired sigh. I recall the way it felt to cast the light away from myself the night before, and repeat the trick. It is shoddy and patchy at best, but the two men start, and they’re distracted enough that they don’t seem to notice the way the air ripples as I quickly move past them and slip through the tall, heavy flap, letting the illusion drop as I enter so as not to call more attention to myself inside.

I pause, eyes cast to the side as I listen. When I don’t feel massive, beefy hands bodily hauling me away, I assume I’m safe and start walking up a carpet so beautiful I feel guilty for every filthy footfall.

Faces turn to me. Most wear amused disbelief, a few outright disdain, one or two only curiosity. There is a balali-- balikl-- a twanging sort of stringed instrument being played somewhere, lilting voices, the gentle clink of teacups on saucers.

God, but they are beautiful. Standing and sitting at low tables on plush, jewel-toned cushions, the posture of every one graceful even if they sit hunched over a chessboard or book, every face clean and flawless. I have never felt so conspicuous in my life.

I straighten as fluidly as I can. I see him in the distance on his dais, in his black, high-backed chair, at his richly-stained an polished table. It is hard to look at him and not see the volcra, not see the unending blackness of the Fold. That is who this is. And that is who I am about to hand myself over to.

I will never argue with Baghra when she calls me a fool. Not once.

Attention spreads like a ripple as the filthy, bloody, runty First Army soldier moves past groups of reclining Grisha, some in areas partitioned by intricate, rich silk screens. Whispers and murmurs and sniggering are taking the place of quiet conversation. Snobs.

My eyes stay on the carpet several steps ahead of me. Far enough that it won’t seem like I’m looking down, near enough that I don’t have to face the reality of him. Not yet. It feels as if I am moving against a current even as it parts around me like air over a bird’s wing. Every detail of sound and sight, even the smells of food and flowers and teas are all crisp and present, even as it all blurs together and fades away like diluted watercolor.

When I reach the dais, I let my eyes stay on the middle ground, breathing through some sort of simmering, tingling, living flame in my chest. I see polished wood, stained black. Rich carpet in jewel tones echoing the pavilion's decor, intricate in the way of the truly expensive, as if past a certain point, money has nowhere to flow but into into every available crack and surface on an object, transforming it into noise. I see shining boots and the feet of rich, broad, simply carved table legs.

I swallow thickly, then make my eyes climb. There is a collection of men, all crisply dressed but only three in what look like military uniform, standing at the long sides of the table as he... as the Darkling sits at its head, eyes cast down to whatever is on its surface. He is sitting as expected: chin propped on one hand and looking bored. It is unreal. A great thrum goes through me, as if someone has put a base drum in the center of my chest and struck it as hard as they could.

Two of the men on the tableside opposite me cast curious glances my way. I am unattractive and underfed, battered and disheveled and generously spotted with old blood, and obviously not an officer, yet I stand here alone and unannounced in front of the head of the Second Army, the second most powerful person in the country.

I have to wait a long time for him to present any notice of me, and I cannot begin to guess what his eyes will show when he does. While I do, snickering and derisive whispers begin behind me, to my right. I don’t have to look. I didn’t have to look as I passed her, either. Zoya, precious Zoya, one of his chosen, as stunning compared to the other Grisha as they are compared to otkazat'sya, seated as close to him as any of the Grisha can be.

“Cram it, Squaller,” I say flatly. It earns me a moment of silence, at least, but when it ends the sniggering is only more loud.

Finally he glances at me - and it is only a glance, brief and, had I not known who I was dealing with, I would say absent. I see a titanic wall of black. I see volcra falling from the sky in bursts of flame, I see an oversized face behind Mal, two large, milky eyes wide and mouth open. Mostly though, I am surprised at how very _normal_ his eyes seem. Just a man’s. Distractingly, abnormally light, yes. Clear and present, yes; in what I can only describe as a disarmingly perfect face, yes. Framed by shining black hair tied into a simple, practical knot. But I am not knocked off my feet by some ancient power, some presence that goes beyond human. He takes note of me, his eyes dart up and down me, and he looks back to the table. Busy. Preoccupied. A man of position with things to do. The strangeness of my presence is beneath him to deal with until he feels like it. If he feels like it.

A hot and cold snake twines over and around itself in my stomach. I allow myself a dry, crooked, humorless smile, and close my eyes. _Here it begins._

My lips part, just barely, and I look back up at him. My head is buzzing, as if everything under my skin is being replaced by helium. My expression is blank but steady, and I find that place in myself where the power lives, deep in my belly, back near my spine. I feel it reflected in the air around me, my tie to it, to every particle of light in every space and slowly I call it to myself, feeling it welcome and warm against my skin, new and familiar and _right._ Slowly I gather it through my shivering exhaustion - my hands and feet feel strangely weak and cold - making it slowly, gradually brighter moment by moment.

I breathe.

His Grisha begin to notice before he does. The stringed instrument breaks off discordantly and I hear people getting to their feet, murmuring, exclaiming in hushed voices. It is the sudden quiet and the fact that every man at his table is now turned to me, faces slack and agape, that finally call his attention.

That I am watching him so closely is the only reason I see the impact of jarring shock that passes over his face. The way his eyes go wide and his neck stiffens, the way his hands tighten on the arms of his chair, gripping them until the blood leaves his fingers, the way muscle tightens through the fabric of his kefta. All of it there and gone in less time than I could take a calm breath. And I know that even through that shock, he could already tell me more about myself than I know. I don't wonder that so many people fear him, even if they don't know how cold and terrifying he can be.

The pavilion has gone utterly silent. There is not one whisper to be heard.

His face is a mask as he rises slowly, then makes his way down the dais, eyes riveted on me, intense, set in a calm mask. He takes in the light around my body and his gaze sweeps to my feet, then slowly works its way up, taking in every inch. I know I am filthy. I know my hair is dull and brittle and my skin probably sallow, marked and uneven in tone. I know I have impressively dark circles under my eyes and look like little more than bones and wiry muscle wrapped in skin. I don’t care. I just watched monsters try and feed on other people. I nearly lost Mal. I called light inside of his great mistake, if a mistake it had been. I just used the Cut, for ‘Saints’’ sake.

I walked here knowing what waited for me, walked my own feet up this aisle and straight to him. I know this man. I know what he can do, how keen his mind is, what he has obsessed over and wanted for hundreds of years, what he plans for the future. I know how dead and cold he is inside, how unfeeling, how pitiless. And I know the fire he kindles, small but constant, at his core. The fire he keeps hidden and buried. I know the secrets he keeps. Some of them. Enough of them for now.

And I know that this man is mine, as he has never and will never belong to anyone else. For as long as he’s been waiting for me, he has no idea what I can do. He has no way of knowing that I am as ready for him and his lies as anyone could be.

His eyes finally make it back to mine, and though they are unreadable, though I couldn’t pick out a single thing that spoke to it, I would swear he was enraptured. Elated. Hungry.

I break the silence. “You’ve been waiting for me,” I say quietly.

He hides any reaction perfectly. I wonder if he really is that good, or if he has simply trained himself to look like this when he is stunned. I wonder which would be more worrying. He stares, his gaze unbroken and effortlessly probing. “...What is your name?” His voice is deeper than I expect.

“Starkov.”

He waits for more, but I don’t give it. “And where have you been hiding, ‘Starkov?’” The words are formal but silken. It is as if no one else is here, as if high-ranking men and dozens of Grisha aren’t straining to hear ever word.

I am glowing softly, shimmering, and speaking just as privately, staring just as intently. “I haven’t been.”

He clasps his hands behind his back and cants his head. “Yet I haven’t heard of you. Very, very little goes on in Ravka without my knowledge. Word of a Sun Summoner would certainly travel.”

A smile plucks at one side of my mouth and I glance down at myself pointedly. “I am the epitome of very little, wouldn’t you say?” I sober. “I was on the crossing just now. We almost died. Apparently monsters and sheer terror bring out the best in me.” Anyone else would have missed my amusement. He sees it. As if in explanation, I raise a hand to gesture at the luminous glow collected against my skin, from tangled hair to worn, filthy, scuffed boots. Maintaining it is wringing the last of my energy from me - just standing tall is making the muscles of my back and all down my legs quiver, making me confusingly unsteady - and I let it fade, then wink out. I feel it cling to my skin like warmth through glass. It is an intimate thing, an experience unique to me in all the world, maybe through all time.

He takes another slow look up and down me.

I know what he sees; I can only guess what he thinks. The mouse? A liar? Potential? A blank slate, a puzzle? A gift or, more likely, how very, very easy this is going to be for him? Suddenly, I want very much to know. “What do you see?” I whisper.

His eyes make it back to mine, but he pauses before answering. “Hope."

It is so unexpected that I can't keep the shock from my face.

"Ivan,” he calls.

The man himself hurries to the Darkling’s side, and he is _massive._ Well over six feet tall, broad and obviously muscled even through his uniform. I am more intimidated by him than I have been the Darkling. Which is a monstrous red flag on my level of healthy fear.

“Take her to my coach,” he orders, eyes seemingly hesitant to leave my face, though I’m not stupid enough to take it as a compliment. “I want her surrounded by an armed guard at all times. Get her to the Little Palace and stop for nothing.”

Ivan nods and makes to move toward me, but I ignore him and say quietly to the Darkling, “I wouldn’t do that.”

He arches a brow and Ivan grins at me, cocky, like I’m daft. Arguably, I am.

“It won’t go well,” is the only explanation I give. “Perhaps I could be a hunter or a pilgrim riding alone with a brother?” I glance down at myself. “Dirtying me up won’t take much work.”

The Darkling considers me in silence until I add, “Call it a feeling.”

He smirks, a small thing, and it is more privately amused than disdainful. “Loathe as I am to ignore your feelings,” he says as if it’s some sort of joke, “I have a good deal more experience in these matters.”

“Oh. So I’m not the first Sun Summoner you’ve secreted away to the Little Palace with all haste?” My mouth is strangely gummy.

A real, full smile splays over his face like a cat in the sun of a window, and I suddenly feel like I’m a stake being eyed on a plate like a large, anticipated, perfectly cooked steak, and he a man who hasn’t eaten. And still, it is so beautiful that a shock goes through me. _Don’t forget who you’re dealing with,_ I order myself.

“Take her,” he says to Ivan. Then he turns around and walks back up the steps of the dais. My eyes narrow at his back.

“Let’s go,” Ivan says brusquely, taking my elbow. His voice is a baritone so low I swear I can feel the air vibrating. He tugs at me before I even get a chance to move, and I balk, mouth open to snap at him.

“Ivan,” the Darkling calls. “Mind yourself. She’s one of us now.”

The Heartrender reddens slightly but gives a small bow, though the Darkling’s back is to us. His grip tightens and when he turns me around, for a moment I’m shocked to see dozens of other people in the tent. I had completely forgotten we weren’t alone.

 _Dangerous, dangerous,_ a voice in my head reprimands over and over.

Ivan urges me down the aisle, ignoring the gaping and whispers. He sets a hurried pace, and when I stumble on gummy, slow legs that just don't want to cooperate any longer, his hold is the only thing that keeps me from a hard faceplant to the carpet underfoot.

We exit the tent and I catch the shocked faces of the guards at the door when they see me. Ivan gives them quick orders for supplies and soldiers, and my eyes go to the gaggle of people milling near the docks in the distance. A few are laid out, otkazat’sya and Grisha Healers tending to them.

I crane my neck searching the crowd for Mal, but can’t find him. I don’t see Alexei, either.

I feel like it should hurt more being tugged away from this place. But I’m not Alina. This isn’t what I know, this isn’t the life I’ve always had, and it isn’t the only person I’ve ever been. From the moment I’d found myself here, I’d known this was coming.

Still, as I’m led at a fast clip to the coach and bustled inside to wait for the guard, as I’m given the plain, gray uniform of an oprichnik to put on, I can’t help the feeling that a piece of my chest is left outside, somewhere in the crowd of survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12/3/17: Updated to expand on Grisha powers and just generally make a couple things better.


	4. Hey, Scars Are Badass

It isn’t two minutes before everyone is in the coach and it’s lurching forward. I don’t look out the window before the curtains are drawn shut.

I suppose I can understand how they mobilized men so quickly - we were in a military encampment after all. Which, I have to admit now that I think about it, must also explain quick access to a week’s worth of travel rations.

“What are you doing?” Ivan asks. It’s like he’s caught someone at something humiliating.

My eyes are closed, my head resting against the smooth wood behind me. Unsurprisingly, utter exhaustion has fast caught up to me. “It’s called ‘sitting,’” I utter a little blearily, without looking at him. “It’s very popular where I’m from.”

“I think he means ‘why are you sitting on the floor?’” a mellow, pleasant voice asks. I crack my eyes open and look up to find a fair-haired Heartrender with a slightly long face trying to hide a smile. Fedyor. He reminds me of an elf. My own lips twitch in reply.

“Ah, now there’s a good question,” I say. “I’m sitting on the floor, good sir, because I prefer it to trying to wedge myself between the two walruses you call men. I assumed Heartrenders wouldn’t want to share.” I turn to men in gray. “Good to meet you both, by the way.” _I really hope you don’t die,_ I think. “Plus I get more leg room this way,” I add brightly, wiggling my toes in my boots to demonstrate.

“Ah. I suppose that makes sense.” He is clearly only humoring me, but he does it in a way that tells me he has a good nature. It makes me like him. “I’m Fedyor, by the way.”

It is physically painful not to interrupt and tell him I already know who he is. But I’m entering into a game where having hidden cards will be vital. That doesn’t stop it from being annoying as hell.

“Starkov,” I say, closing my eyes and not even trying to hide the way my words slur together. “If you’ll excuse me, apparently surviving an attack by winged living nightmares, finding the use of mystical powers, and then calling them floor to ceiling is tiring. We have a long ride ahead of us. I’m going to take a nap.”

“If there’s an ambush, a bullet will go right through that door into your back,” Ivan warns, clearly fighting the urge to haul me up bodily and shove me into place between the two gorillas.

“Yes,” I say, “because when _I_ attack a carriage, I always like to aim at the doors, instead of the places where the people are sitting. I hope you don’t get put in charge of anything im-- imopor--” I can’t force the word out through the yawn that is threatening to unhinge my jaw. When I’m finished I just groan and pull my legs up against myself to make the hard floor a little more comfortable on my spine. I let my head tip to the side. It finds a knee.

“...What are you doing?” The baritone asks again. It is a much more annoyed question this time.

“Napping,” I slur. “I just said. The ridiculous amount of muscle you have makes a good pillow when it’s relaxed.” It twitches in reply. “Now I don’t mean to be rude, but kindly shut the hell up, or I will burn this place to the ground.”

 

* * * * *

 

When I wake, I find something bundled under my head like a pillow, and my stomach is growling loudly. I look down at it in surprise before I remember that I’m going to be doing a lot of eating for a while.

I hear a breathy chuckle and look up to find Fedyor again, rummaging through a bag. He pulls out some strips of dried meat and an apple.

“Oh, God love you,” I effuse. Even I am surprised at how fast the food is gone. One moment I’m eating, the next I’m reaching for another bite only to find nothing there. I can’t help the despondent look on my face. Fedyor does laugh then, and I even see the mouth of one of the oprichniki twitch. I wash the “meal” down with as much water as I can hold, hoping some of the meat will magically rehydrate in my stomach and take up more room.

“Wouldn’t figure a tiny thing like you for such an eater,” Ivan comments.

“Yes, well... apparently... something. I haven’t been awake long enough for snappy comebacks.” I let my head thunk back against the door. “Usually I have to be force fed. But suddenly,” _and mysteriously,_ I think sarcastically, “I could eat....” I trail off and look Ivan up and down. “Well, I bet I could eat _you_ under the table. I feel like I didn’t even have anything; my stomach is still doing acrobatics.”

“You’ll be able to have as much as you want when we get you to the Little Palace,” Fedyor assures me, an apologetic note in his voice. “It’ll be better than cheese and fruit and dried meat, too.”

“There’s cheese? Oh,” I hurry to clarify, “I wasn’t complaining. That’s not really a thing I do. I was just... sharing an experience, I guess.”

“...So?” Ivan nudges.

I narrow my eyes at him. “With specific questions like that, you must be great at interrogating people. So, what? So am I ready for that eat-off? So do I know the words to your favorite song? So am I secretly a man?”

And there is the sneer. Disgustingly, my reaction isn’t wanting to punch it off of his face - the expression actually suits it. “You didn’t appear out of thin air. How did you hide your powers? And _why?”_ he scoffs, as if he has never heard of anything so preposterous.

I stretch, yawning expansively, but it is cut off sharply. “Ow! Mother fucker!” I swear. There is a horribly painful tug at my back.

“You have a mouth on you,” Ivan says. I honestly can’t tell if he’s pleased or disapproving.

“What’s wrong?” Fedyor asks, leaning forward.

“I don’t know,” I reach behind my back to feel at the spot. “I-- Ow!” The moment I twist too much, there’s that tug again. “What....”

“Here, stand up,” Fedyor says, rising. “Lubov,” he says to one of the oprichniki, “give her your hand. Turn around, please,” he says to me.

I do as I’m told, and Fedyor helps me out of the borrowed corecloth top as carefully as he can. He’s quiet at he gently prods at my back. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you were injured?” He asks. I gather from his tone that it’s considerably more than a scratch.

“Injured?”

“Yes. I can try to fix it, but....”

“...You have very poor bedside manner,” I say, and my voice is not as light as I would like. “You make it sound like I have a hole in my ribcage.”

“Lift your left leg up off the floor.” I wrinkle my brow, but do. “Feel that? How the back of your trouser leg is stiff? That’s dried blood.”

A thrum goes through me. “So... definitely more of a scratch, then.”

It sounds like he’s pursing his lips as he goes on, gingerly helping my arms out of my coat sleeves. “All Heartrenders have some training in Healing, but this needs an actual Healer. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m going to go with the three tonnes of adrenaline that were probably in my system at the time. I honestly didn’t know I was hurt.”

“Let me see,” Ivan says, leaning over. He and Fedyor converse in low voices.

“You know keeping it secret is just going to make me think it’s worse than it is,” I eventually snap. “I’m not a goddamned wilting flower, and I have a morbid imagination, so just tell me what’s wrong.”

Fedyor sighs tightly. “I need to get your jacket and shirt off.”

I still.

“They’ve healed into the wound,” Ivan says. “You were asleep for a long time. It’s going to hurt. A lot.”

I curse vehemently under my breath. “Fine,” I bite out. “Get it over with. Ivan, give me your hand, please.”

“Wait,” Fedyor says, moving around to my front. “It’ll be easier if we can do it all at once. Can I cut your shirt open?”

I glance up at him, very much _You’re the doctor, why are you asking me?_ “Knock yourself out.”

He pulls a dagger from somewhere in his kefta and carefully slices through the soiled fabric of my shirt, holding it in his free hand as he goes so it doesn’t tug at the skin of my back. There’s what looks like fabric wrapped around my chest underneath, apparently what passes for a bra.

I see Ivan’s hand in my periphery vision, offered out for me to hold. I feel the warmth of gratitude, though it’s dulled from tension. I twine my fingers with his and clamp down, then slide my my hand out of Lubrov’s and up to grip his wrist. He mirrors my hold and I give him a grateful nod. I take deep breaths and make my muscles relax. Yes, this is going to hurt, but a lot of pain is mental, and I don’t want to feel any more than necessary. If I can keep my muscles relaxed, that will help.

“Alright,” I say. “All at once if you can, please.”

“Okay,” Fedyor says. I feel my jacket pulling gently at the wound, and God but it is much, much bigger than I would have guessed. It runs is a large swath nearly from shoulder to opposite hip, in fact. Then, all at once, there is a ripping _yank,_ followed immediately by a second, shorter one, then a third at my hip, and despite my best efforts, a half scream, half sob comes out of me and my back arches. I would collapse to my knees if not for the strong hands gripping mine. I have a considerable pain tolerance - this hurt, though, is _spectacular._ It takes my breath and turns my vision black for a moment.

“Alright,” Fedyor says, his voice smooth and calming, though I can feel him moving quickly. “You’re alright. That was the worst of it.” Someone presses a cloth to my chest.

When an urgent knock comes at the window, a soldier behind it asking if everything is alright, Fedyor tells the man he needs cloth, any kind of cloth so long as it’s large. I can tell why - I feel warm wetness seeping into the fabric of my trousers, cooling where it seems to be coating my back and quickly chilling in the air.

“J--” I cut myself off. ‘Jesus,’ I almost said. “What the hell is it?”

“Claw marks,” Fedyor says. His voice is grim, but he has the calm of a field surgeon. That, at least, is reassuring.

The soldier is back within moments, handing through what looks like a thin undershirt of some kind. I see daylight outside, but the shadows mark the time as earlier than it should be. Ivan hadn’t been kidding when he said I’d slept a long time. Through the evening and night, and it was probably at least early afternoon the next day now.

“Hold this at her hips, below the wound,” Fedyor says to Ivan, handing the cloth to him. “We’ll replace them when I’m done.” _Replace what?_ The big man presses it firmly to the skin just above my waistband, but with surprising gentleness.

I see the oprichnik who has my hand glance behind me and give a small nod, then suddenly I’m so dizzy I can’t keep my legs under me. But he’s there, catching me and lowering me to my knees, holding me as I fall limply against him. He leans back and pulls my arms up over his shoulders, baring my skin so Fedyor can work. Everything is slow, muffled and hazy. One of the bastards slowed my heart.

“Whishever one of you that was,” I slur, my words horribly garbled, “thell me... ‘efore you do that... ness time... or ahl pfunch you in the balls.”

“Stay still,” Fedyor says in that same calm, reassuring voice, “and don’t waste energy trying to talk. There’s going to be a scar, I’m sorry, I can’t do anything about that, but I can keep you from bleeding to death.”

“Hey,” I say. It sounds like I’m heavily drugged. “Shkarssar’ badath.” ‘Scars are badass,’ it was supposed to be.

I hear an amused huff behind me. “Stop talking,” the air vibrates. The shirt is adjusted and pressed a little more firmly against my skin. It feels sticky. I moan in impotent protest, too weak to even try to move away.

I give myself up to the the solid surety of the chest supporting me, and the warm heaviness trying to pull me under. Inside it, there is nothing, and it is the most perfect happiness - peace - I have ever felt.

 

* * * * *

 

When I come to, it’s dark again. Fedyor is handing my jacket - I see what look like chunks of dried flesh before he bundles it up - and tunic literally soaked in blood being handed out the door. He insists I sit between the oprichniki. Apparently even with my heart slowed, I lost a lot of blood. I’m given food and water and told to take it easy.

The oprichnik corecloth shirt has been put back on me, and from what I can tell, there’s nothing underneath. “The scarring is extensive,” Fedyor says apologetically. “A good Healer might be able to reduce it, but that’s probably the best you can hope for. Your clothes were useless, we had to throw them out. We have trousers for you to change into next time we stop, you’ll want them under the corecloth. They’ll be big and you’ll have to be quick, but the only reason yours were staying on was all the blood.”

I turn my shoulders gently to feel out my back. The skin is a little stiff, but otherwise it feels fine. “You just saved my life, Fedyor. I’m pretty sure ‘I’m sorry’ shouldn’t be among the first things you say.”

Ivan, I notice, is looking at me with begrudging approval.

“So....” I say, wanting very much to change the subject. “Where were we? Oh, right. ‘Why did I draft dodge?’ I didn’t. I didn’t know I had any powers.”

Ivan narrows his eyes at me. “So, what, you weren’t examined? Did you live under a rock?”

I look at him, mirroring his expression. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a dick? To your face?”

A muscle in Ivan’s jaw clenches, and Fedyor sputters trying to stifle a laugh. I can see tension leaving him with the sound, and for some reason, the sight makes me relax, too.

“I _was_ examined. When I was eight.”

“Eight? Why so old?” Fedyor asks, perfect brow wrinkling in confusion.

“Apparently I was living under a rock.” I’m staring at the curtain as if I’ll be able to see through it if I try hard enough. When no retort comes, I explain, “My parents were dead. Everyone was dead. My home and village were razed, presumably. I don’t know, I never really got the details. Asking about where I came from was looked at as ungrateful.”

I see Ivan give me a weird look from the corner of my eye and wonder if I’m making a friend or pissing him off with the talk of dead family. Arguably, it shouldn’t be either. Everyone has feelings, but I always got the impression his were buried twenty feet down. “Well, I think I was eight,” I say. “It was a guessing game, really, what with the dead... well, you get the idea.”

“Does it bother you?” Fedyor asks, gentling his voice.

I look at him seriously. “Do you think I’m being a flippant shit because I _don’t_ care?”

“Ok,” Ivan rumbles, and I’m not imagining the undertone of annoyance in his voice. “So what happened, then?” he asks. “When you were examined.”

I shrug blithely. “Apparently my powers were shy that day. Maybe they had a cold. How the hell should I know? I was eight. Ish. What do you remember from when you were eight?”

“Losing my father to the war.”

I sober and look at him. “...I’d tell you I’m sorry,” I say, and it is the most gentle my voice has been so far, “but you don’t strike me as the type who would appreciate sympathy.” I pause, watching what looks like a carefully impassive expression on his face, edged by that ready aggression. “So instead, I’ll just promise that if I ever stumble upon whoever is responsible, I’ll murder them in the most horrific way I can imagine. Unless I can tie them up and give them to you wrapped in a bow, that is.”

I look away, glancing balefully at the curtains again. The only sound is the jostling of the carriage and the hooves of horses outside. It isn’t long before I’m passing out again, head lolling over onto a muscled shoulder.

 

* * * * *

 

When I wake next, I practically scream bloody murder for a bathroom break. Fedyor follows, insisting on staying so close that he can absolutely, definitely hear me pee, and my loud groan of relief. But to be fair, they can probably hear the latter all the way back on the road. God help us all when it’s time to do something other than that. I change into the borrowed trousers as fast as I can. They’re far too large, but given that they smell clean, I don’t care. We’re rolling forward again before I’m even all the way inside the carriage. I resume my seat on the floor.

The food is the same: mostly made to last, and absolutely not enough.

I occupy myself by practicing with my abilities, stretching and flexing them in every way I can think of. How long can I maintain a ball of light? At what size? How many of them? How easy is it to adjust intensity, and how quickly can I do it? What can I do while keeping that up, how far can I split my attention?

Already the scope of what I can do is exponentially larger than it was just... two days ago, now? My deer now has slender legs, a delicate head, an elegant neck and raised tail. It moves with gentle grace.

I expected this to be like learning to walk, but it isn’t. It’s like my legs had gone asleep, or moreso like I hadn’t used them in a long time, like they’re unsteady and a little weak and I’m _remembering_ how to walk. It reminds me of the feeling of pumping my legs, feeling the power and freedom of running all-out, as fast as I can, just for the joy of it. That is what this power is. It’s freedom. It’s might, puissance. It’s everything I am, put outside of my body for the world to see. It is beautiful, perfect, like looking at my own soul.

I find I can do creative things with it. I can make it look like a flame, for instance. A solid pyramid of light with no diffusion at the edges, or an actual sun, flares and everything.

I’m so absorbed, it takes me a long time to realize that the silence is somehow much heavier than usual. Four sets of eyes are watching. It might make me nervous or self-conscious, but I stubbornly pretend I’m in my own space with no one else around. Sitting in my cramped little spot on the floor helps.

“Is this like a muscle?” I ask at one point.

“What do you mean?” It’s Fedyor. His voice is hushed, as if he’ll disturb what he’s seeing if he speaks too loudly.

“Our powers. Are they like muscle? The more you use them, the stronger they get, the more endurance they have, things like that.”

“To a point,” Ivan rumbles, and his voice is lowered, too, though not as much. It sounds either transfixed or calm or introspective, I can’t tell. “Every Grisha is born with a limit to what they can do, a set pool of power they can draw from. You can’t make that larger no matter how hard you work. But within that, the more you use it, the easier it is to use.”

I don’t reply, but I don’t need to. I just go on playing.

I debate practicing invisibility, but decide to keep that to myself for now. Instead, I work at something that proves to be much more difficult: colors. If I can bend light, then I should be able to bend specific wavelengths. If I can do that, I can control which colors are reflected off of a given surface and make that surface look like any color I want.

I could turn Ivan’s hair or robes bubblegum pink. I could make the Darkling’s carriage white instead of black, or my eyes blue. But before long, I’m sweating with the effort of it, squinting at the door opposite me and beginning to sear with frustration. I figured that since white reflects all colors and black absorbs them, a change between the two would be the easiest to start with, the closest to invisibility.

“What are you doing?” Fedyor asks.

“Trying something,” I say absently.

“You look like the door just insulted your mother,” the oprichnik who isn’t Lubov says.

I don’t know how long I’m at it, but a patch of the coach’s wall below the window flashes white, just for an instant, and I scream my triumph in an “Ah-HAha!” It makes everyone jerk so violently that the carriage rocks on its axis. It’s only a second before there’s a tap at the window again.

“Everything alright in there?” A voice asks through the polished wood and the glass etched with the Darkling’s symbol.

“Yes,” I call back. “Sorry!” Then to myself in a sheepish voice, “I promise I’ll try to stop screaming.”

Ivan is glaring at me and I swear I see his hand twitch like he wants to stop my heart in my chest, just so I know he can. Who am I kidding, that would only be a side benefit.

“What happened?” Fedyor asks. His eyes are still a little widened, adrenaline still clutching him, if I had to guess. “It isn’t your back?”

“No. No,” I assure him. “You didn’t see it?” I ask expectantly.

“See what?”

My face falls a little. But of course no one saw it. It was only an instant, and I was the only one staring fixedly at the door.

“I changed the color,” I said, gesturing to the surface across the carriage from me.

His brows raise.

“How?” Ivan asks churlishly.

“I thought you people got years of schooling heavy in the sciences,” I say. “Light wavelengths. I bent them. It was just a flash, just for an instant, but by God I did it. I’m giving myself an A-plus considering that it hasn’t been... how long have we been on the road? Ugh, actually, nevermind, I don’t want to know. I haven’t been using my powers for very long and that was freaking incredible, is my point.”

“Clever,” Fedyor utters, half to himself. “Is that why you look clammy?”

I shrug a shoulder self-consciously. “It’s a new muscle. And I was working hard to keep from throwing something through a window in frustration because it wasn’t working.” I manage to make my tone sound dismissive rather than defensive.

“Where did a nobody soldier learn about wavelengths of light?” Ivan asks. It’s disgusting and infuriating how much I like the sound of his voice.

“Somewhere she wasn’t a nobody soldier,” I say acidly. Then I mutter under my breath, “Dick.”

“You know I heard that.”

I flush slightly, but mulishly reply, “Well if you’d like to overhear more complimentary things, then stop being such a dick.” I think perhaps that feeling the stare of someone who wants to murder me must be a niche of my power. “Haven’t you ever heard that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“Why would I care when I can just stop their hearts?”

“Typical,” I mutter under my breath. Then aloud, “It’s a saying. And flies don’t have hearts. They just have... goop.”

“I know,” he replies snidely. “It’s a saying.”

“Nowhere in the world is that a saying, Ivan. Literally nowhere.”

“Would you two like a room?” Fedyor asks. He is immediately met with two glowers that I’d wager would kill a lesser man.

 

* * * * *

 

As I practice, I spend most of my energy on bending color and trying to figure out how to concentrate heat within the light I summon. Starkov is tiny. Even once she fills out, she’ll be tiny, and I find myself enamored with the idea of being able to sear someone’s hand if they touch me when I don’t want them to. I imagine lighting things on fire at will would be useful, too. When I’m too tired or frustrated at a lack of results, I meditate, trying to find ways to connect with the light around me. It’s a piece of me, and I want to be a piece of it. I feel intrinsically that this will be the key to something great. Or maybe I just feel like it will be some key to myself. Either way, I pursue it obsessively. I have a hope that if I can connect to it in the right way, I can be bigger than my body, able to see what’s outside of me the same way I feel the air on my skin.

Time loses its meaning with the absence of light and dark and shadow. I practice and exercise, meditate, fidget restlessly because I can’t move, eat and continue to feel ravenous, sleep, usually against Ivan’s knee, and hold my bladder until I have to insist on a break. I am saved the humiliation of someone having to hear and smell anything else, at least, because apparently I can’t do that with an audience. It is a very uncomfortable blessing. In this way, time passes.

Until the carriage comes to a stop without anyone asking for it.

I jerk upright, eyes wide, pulse instantly hammering.

Fedyor taps Ivan on the arm to wake him, then whispers to me, almost too quiet to hear. “Stay down there.”

I shake my head at him. “Don’t,” I breathe back. “Don’t, it’s Fj--”

But then the guard is at the window and he gets shot mid-sentence, his blood marring the perfect glass.

Ivan is ordering Fedyor and the oprichniki out opposite sides and I cry, “Don’t!”

Ivan and the guards are launching themselves outside as Fedyor stops and crouches next to me. "You'll be safe in here," he promises.

They think I'm protesting because I'm _scared?_

He presses his knife into my hand. I pull my hand away, but he forcibly curls my fingers around the hilt. “I promise. Stay here, stay quiet, stay down.” Then he’s gone, too.

Stay here? Like hell.

It sounds like most of the fighting is to the right of the carriage. Then again, sound can be deceptive. My hand tightens around the knife so hard that it affords painful clarity, and I make myself take a steadying breath.

All the straining I’ve been doing over the past few days to single out wavelengths of light makes bending all of them at once seem like running over solid ground when all I’ve done is move on sand. I glance down and can’t help a vicious curl of my lips to see no holes in the illusion, no wavering.

I move to the left door and quietly unlatch it. After a long moment has gone by with no one charging in, I slowly crack it open. I wait, then eke it open further until I can see out. There is fighting outside, but only a small handful of men. I take a chance and slip out, closing the door behind me. The quiet noise can’t be heard over guns and bellows and cries, and it doesn’t look like anyone saw. Even if they did, they would assume it was the wind, not an invisible woman. Occam’s razor, bitches.

I have so much adrenaline in my blood, my arm shakes as I smash my elbow through the window. I remove the shards left on the bottom of the frame and my legs are trembling, too, as I lift a foot to the step outside the door and hoist myself up. I am clenched tight to try to keep my muscles steady enough to use.

I glance behind me and see a giant, bearded blond man with pale skin and sky-blue eyes charging toward the carriage with rage on his face. As fast as I can I scrabble up until my feet are on the bottom edge of the window frame, my foot leaving it a split second after he starts to yank the door open. I haul myself up onto the top of the coach and laying flat on my stomach, trembling.

The view on the other side of the carriage is bloody. There are at least fourty men hacking at each other, most with swords, some with guns. We had more soldiers around us than I thought and, though I shouldn’t be surprised, an entire team of Heartrenders, plus Inferni and Squallers. The Darkling hadn’t been joking when he said he wanted me protected. A weight settles over me, and suddenly all of this is much more real.

The worst part is snipers - Fjerdans with guns are hanging back behind trees and crouched behind bushes, on their bellies on hills, picking off our people. My eyes narrow, protective rage fills me, and my power surges in response.

It is reckless, it is idiotic, and it is beyond foolish but I am _angry,_ so I set off blinding sunbursts right in the faces of the snipers, one after another. I do the same to a man who’s trying to attack a soldier from behind, and to another who I see taking aim at Lubov. The Fjerdans are easy to pick out, at least. Every one of them is fair-haired and roughly half the size of a bear.

Helpfully enough, in addition to some of them now being blinded, most of the druskelle are now scrambling to find me, providing just enough distraction to make it easier for my side to pick them off. Even with as many people as the Darkling put on the coach, they are wildly outnumbered. With the fight altered in our favor, I pull back to the middle of the coach top and into myself, concentrating on doing nothing but staying out of sight. I keep my ears open out of some vain notion that I’ll be able to tell if the fight turns in a bad direction, like I can pick out the nationality of the losing side by the way they scream and grunt.

And then there’s the thunder of hoofbeats, a sea of blue and red trailing behind a dark man on a dark horse. I look over, and his arms are spread wide and his palms are slamming together before he’s even all the way off his horse. The carriage rattles with the sound of his summoning, and I look away, squeezing my eyes shut as I see those short, fat strands of inky black wriggling spider-fast over the ground. I know what happens next. I don’t want to see them find the Fjerdans, slither up their legs....

I am not a coward. But I know my limit, and I will not push past it unless I have to. It would be like sprinting at the beginning of a marathon.

Blades make a very distinctive sound when they find flesh, and terrified screams are very different than angry or pained ones.

“Where is she?” the Darkling calls. His voice is steady  and commanding, but urgent.

I turn my head to answer, but stop, realizing I’m flat on my belly on top of his coach. I see no benefit in looking as small and afraid as I feel, not in front of him. In looking like a girl, a damsel, a creature whose limbs are shaking from too much adrenaline and the aftershocks of being surrounded by dying men and women. So I take a moment.

To the sound of men spreading out and calling my name, I push up on my hands, turn around on the lacquered roof, and push myself toward the edge. I take a long breath and swing my legs over the side, crossing them, make myself sit up straight, and I lean back onto my hands. I clear my throat quietly and, since I don’t trust my voice to be steady, give a little summoning whistle as I let myself come back into view.

As a one, every head snaps to me. I am staring at the Darkling, and unless he can see the very slight tremble of my jaw and lower lip, my face is as inscrutable as his.

It is very, very hard not to smile at the surprise on his face.

 

* * * * *

 

The men and horses are dividing up into their parties with what is frankly impressive speed as Ivan asks what’s to be done with “The girl.”

 _“The girl_ has a name,” I snap. I clearly mouth “Dick” at him.

The Darkling’s eyes dart to me. “She rides with me.”

I set my jaw mulishly. “No.”

He stops, one hand freezing as it pulls a glove onto the other. He turns to look at me. Ivan has stopped, too, but I keep my eyes on the Darkling.

“I’d like my own horse,” I say, and unless he can smell fear and adrenaline, my act is flawless. Is what I would say if I were talking about anyone but him. “If you’re worried about me keeping up, don’t be. I know how to ride.”

“It’s a question of your safety,” he says. “I won’t take chances, not after what just happened. Right now, there is nowhere in the world safer for you than with me.”

How terribly convenient. “Given that the attack just happened,” I say, “unless there are a hundred Shu hiding in the bushes, I’d say we’re okay for a minute. I’ll stay close,” I say stubbornly. “I’m not sitting in anyone’s lap.” It is a gamble, so openly and plainly defying him, and one I only make because I know how important I am to him. I’m about to see how it plays out. Whether it goes favorably or horrifically, I’ll learn something.

“Go,” he says, his eyes on me. But he’s talking to Ivan, and the big man does as he’s told immediately. The Darkling walks up to me and stares me down just a moment too long. “How did you know about the attack?” he asks quietly. There is a predator in the calm tones, something crouched just out of sight and watching.

“Common sense,” I say. When he waits expectantly I clench my jaw. His eyes go to the muscle that jumped, and it only makes me clench harder. “You sent me away as fast as you did because you knew people would be after me, right?” I say. I wait for confirmation, but get none. He is only watching, so closely that it makes me physically uncomfortable. Naturally I assume it’s on purpose and to do just that.

“People are stupid,” I say flatly. “The hunters bet you’d take the obvious but faster route along the Vy, rather than play it safe,” I want to say ‘rather than make the smart move,’ but I’m not that suicidal (yet), “and send me along back roads and hunting trails. Because that’s what pretty much anyone would do. Surrounding your coach in so much protection made it a target, and whether it was really me or a diversion, anyone who was coming after a Sun Summoner was going to go right for it.

“I ‘knew’ because I have a brain and basic skills of deductive reasoning. Just like I knew they’d send as many as they could because they would assume you wouldn’t let me out of your sight.”

I realize a moment too late that I’ve just called him an idiot.

I honestly cannot tell which of the seeds, the possibilities I see in his perfectly controlled face might be what’s actually going on under the surface.

I flush, and I want to pitch this body into a damn river. “I’m not insulting you or anything, not intentionally. You have a reputation for being brilliant, but how often does a figure of myth show up out of the blue, literally at your feet, disguised as a filthy, bloody, malnourished First Army soldier?” I pause and force my voice to lighten. “Alternatively, I’m pretty sure you’re allowed one slip every now and again.”

“...Ivan,” he calls. “Bring her a horse.” I let a tiny, lopsided twitch of a smile onto my face.

“Why were you a Cartographer?” he asks. As in, _Why were you_ only _a cartographer?_

I shrug one shoulder. “Apparently I was a passable artist when I young, and when I got drafted, it was the obvious choice. Strictly speaking, I’m not burdened with an overabundance of ambition. Shouldn’t we be fleeing to the safety of the capitol?”

He considers me another moment as Ivan leads a pale, dappled gray horse with dark socks to me. “Stay close enough to touch, or riding with me will not be optional.” With that, he turns and swings gracefully up into his saddle.

I’m up in my own immediately. With a glance at me and a quick nod, the Darkling spurs his horse straight into a gallop, and I hurry to keep up.

My mount stays glued to the side of his shining black horse unless the trail prevents it, at which point I keep only far enough back that my horse can’t be kicked by his, should the mood strike it. Even through the woods, we rarely fall below a canter.

By the time we stop for the day, most of the horses are lathered, and some are trembling. I want to help cool them down and take their gear off, but I - Alina - wasn’t in a mounted unit. Knowing how to ride is one thing. Care and grooming are likely another. So I just cast a glance back at them, my brows pinched together, as I follow the others toward the makings of a camp nestled in a tight clearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About half of this may or may not be rough draft.
> 
> I got impatient. >_>
> 
> -
> 
> I thought someone might appreciate this insight into my creative process. Here is a scene summary I wrote so I wouldn’t forget what I wanted to include:
> 
> “Blah blah attack blah, hides on top of coach, whistles, I’m so fancy, whatever.”
> 
> -
> 
> I'm under no illusion that anyone with medical training would yank cloth that's healed into a wound off like a bandage. I was just not in one of my more, er, mentally present places (I have a thing sometimes where I don't brain well) when I wrote the scene, and then when I realized it was, you know, not a thing, I was tired and impatient and frankly, too lazy to rewrite it. There's also the fact that if she'd had an injury that severe, one of the million people staring at her back all morning would have said something.
> 
> This is my lazy story, I don't have to care. It's glorious.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 9/15/17: Chapter yoinked in half. There's long, and then there's tooooo long.


	5. Glimmer

I know I’m hyper aware of him. I also know it’s only in part because I know the truth. He is magnetic, and I can understand what Genya meant when she said all Grisha feel a pull toward him. It is a deadly and dangerous thing.

Still, because so much of my attention is always on him, though I religiously keep my eyes away, I’m aware of how much he looks at _me._ I wish he was easier to read, and isn’t that a laughable thought. Is he curious about me? _What sort of person is the Sun Summoner?_ Or more probably looking for the cracks he can pry at so he can start to work his way in. Even the glances and looks themselves could be study, or they could be him already playing his game. I’m a no-one, and here this powerful, mysterious man is paying attention to me. I’m the Sun Summoner? Sure. But he’s just so _dreamy._

Somewhere around the third day, I start to feel fuzzy, like I’m in a dream. I’ve spoken to no one, kept to myself, sat as far to the outside of the camp as I could get away with, and done nothing but meditate. Sun up to twilight we are in the saddle, and I swear to every god that ever was, my ass is a solid, compact blister. There is nothing but dust and shadows and green, the sounds of horses, the smells of horses, the exponential ripening of over twenty unwashed bodies, muscles that shouldn’t be sore, following directions, and feeling like I have a saddle between my thighs even when I’m on the ground.

Wake, eat, mount. Dismount, pee, mount. Eat, dismount, pee, eat, sleep. All I do is follow, and my brain doesn’t bother waking up in the morning anymore.

On the fifth night - at least eight days since I left Kribursk - we stop at the farmhouse, and I’m told about the creek I can wash up at. I hang back, hoping to see the Darkling go down for his turn so I can avoid him, but my patience runs out before I see him go down. I am disgusting, I am rough as sandpaper from all the dried sweat on my skin, and all I have been allowed besides a little drinking water the last eight days is just enough to rinse my mouth out in the mornings.

The creek is abandoned when I walk down a little hill toward it, and dusk is just setting in. Under the canopy here, it’s nearly too dark to see. I summon a gentle glow near the ground, like a heavy, thin mist, hoping it’s quiet enough that it won’t be seen back in the camp, and peel off my gray corecloth shirt, folding it neatly and setting it at the base of a tree. Hyper-aware of sounds - I’m half naked, after all - I sink to my knees at the bank, plunging my hands into the biting water. I close my eyes, reveling in the feel of something that is not dirt or the rhythm of a horse under me.

A small smile spreads over my lips, and I cup my hands and bring water to my face, rubbing it with a pleasured hum. I do it a second time, then run a wet hand over my neck.

I rise and pick a few leaves from a tree, bunch them up as best I can, and after running water over my skin and giving it a gentle rub-down to get most of the salt off, use them as a sort of washcloth. I’m not bold enough to wash the part of me that needs it most, but I can at least get this much and give my underarms a good scrub.

Like food on a ravenous stomach, it is possibly the best thing I have ever felt.

When I’m done, I sprinkle the leaves out, watching them fall to the ground with a little smile, then stand up and turn my back to the creek, extending my arms over my head and stretching so thoroughly that a pleased sound, somewhere between a cry and a growl, comes out, arguably too loud. I laugh quietly at myself and move sore muscles in swings and circles and stretches. I arch my back and roll my head on my neck. It feels wonderful to have a moment to myself.

I’m stooped over to pick up my shirt when I remember the wound on my back. I’ve forgotten all about it in the excitement, the numbing travel, and the pervasive distraction of Aleksander Morozova. I straighten and let my fingertips rove gently over my right shoulder. My brows pull together. Fedyor wasn’t kidding - it’s an impressive scar, wide and raised and puckered. I remember the feeling of him ripping off the jacket and what I saw on it as he passed it out the door to a soldier. Judging from the scar, he had literally taken chunks. But if he’d had to do that, the wound must have been frightening to begin with. Suddenly my exhaustion that first day takes on a new light. I may be lucky I woke up at all.

My head is bent and to the side, fingers gently probing the ridges near my left hip, when a voice out of nowhere asks, “When did you get that?”

I jump and gasp, my head whirling around, my light going out. It’s the Darkling, and I’m suddenly very aware of my state of undress.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I effuse as I quickly bend down and retrieve my lone shirt. I pull it over my head and turn around as I’m settling it over my stomach. “Are you going to tell me Ivan didn’t give you a full report? “I got it the day I met you. Is it claw marks, or just one wide swath? I haven’t been able to get a look at it, I just know it was nasty. Between you and me, I think I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

“Claw marks,” he says, crouching down before the creek and raising cupped hands full of the clear water to his face.

I look at him for a moment, more arrested than I would ever admit, but he doesn’t say anything else, just splashes a little water through his dark hair. “Gooood to know,” I say a little uncertainly. “Thanks.” Without waiting to be dismissed, I step over the creek and past him, headed up the hill, with a shake of my head.

I hear the soft splash of water as he speaks again. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“Did you want me to be?”

“No.” His voice rises as he stands. “But most people are.”

I hum in answer and, as I resume walking, say, “Only most?” I leave the light clinging to the earth for him. I have manners. Sometimes.

 

* * * * *

 

I am outside the circle of firelight, away from the soldiers and Grisha, seated with my back against one of the rough barn walls. I should perhaps be friendly, or at least try not to seem like a standoffish bitch, but I can’t be bothered. I’m tired. I’m loopy. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to _belong_ here. And honestly, I’m a little worried Ill say or do something I shouldn’t because my head isn’t on straight.

I do, though, smile sincerely at the man who brings me my tiny serving of the grouse someone caught. I wanted to decline so everyone else would have that much more - it’s not like I can even tell I ate anything afterwards - but I know it would be rude. And stupid, given that I’m so ravenous something still feels like nothing.

My stomach is knotting on itself and I am so tired, but all I’ve done for more than a week is ride and sleep, ride and sleep. I’m too tired of the tiredness, and the sameness for the idea of sleep to be palatable, so I just let my head fall back against the barn wall and, for a little while, gently and rhythmically knock my head against the wood. After a little while, I stop and look up past the rafters to the large holes in the roof. The stars here are so bright. I could give up half of every day just to be able to stay up looking at them.

I close my eyes, and instead of seeing the starlight, I _feel_ it, cool and clean and so different from the fire before me or the sun behind me, tucked under the earth. It feels more welcome, like more of a fit than the sunlight. It’s in the air all through the barn, in the shafts of light and the shadowed corners, around the fire and against the skin of the men resting and talking to one another. And suddenly _I_ feel cool and clean, right and matching, alight with it, awash as if I am a piece of the heavens myself. I lose time as I sit like this, feeling more whole than I think I ever have.

I don't notice how quiet its gotten until a voice cracks the silence. “That’s beautiful,” it says from close nearby, quiet and earnest.

I jump, my eyes flying open, and almost lose the string of connection that’s holding soft white light against my skin. I hadn’t even known I was summoning. I blink up at the Darkling as he lowers himself uninvited to sit next to me. He is disgustingly graceful, fluid, strong. Is he showing off? Is the game starting in earnest? He leans back against the wall and takes a drink from a flask wrapped in worn leather, then holds it out to me.

“But you might want to put it away,” he says.

I look over at him, brows just slightly pulled together. “Why?”

He smiles a little and withdraws the flask, securing the lid. “This is an old barn. You’ll shine like a lighthouse through the cracks. It’s why we’re keeping the fire so small.”

I look away from him, not bothering to point out what basic common sense that is about the fire, because even though I didn’t technically mean to summon, his warning is just as obvious.

I hear him take a breath as if in surrender, and as if bracing himself. “We have some time tonight. So ask,” he says.

“Ask what?”

“Anything you’d like to know.”

I huff a quiet, dry laugh. There isn’t anything I want to know. But while I’m casting around for how to decline, I land on something that has me glad my face isn’t turned toward him, because I can’t stop my lips from twitching. “What’s your real name?”

“I’ve gone by the Darkling for as long as I can remember.” Seamless, no hesitation.

Again, I laugh quietly.

“What’s funny?”

“Oh? Just picturing a squadron of nannies following you around, saying ‘The Darkling, it’s time for dinner,’ and ‘The Darkling, stop touching that, you'll go blind!’ In my head it’s hilarious.”

He gives a wry, breathy chuckle. “I wouldn’t say it was a _squadron._ What else?”

“How old are you?” I ask obligingly. I still have my head back against the wood, looking up and just a little away from him. My voice is the only thing keeping my demeanor just to this side of icy and standoffish.

“I don’t know exactly.”

I make a noise of acknowledgement. “Rough estimate, then?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I thought it was _my_ gender that was supposed to be age-sensitive.”

“Most people don’t live as long as I have.”

“Do you always take this long to say ‘no?’ And here I’d heard you were frighteningly no-nonsense.”

“I suppose I was expecting different questions.”

“Mm. Expectations can be dangerous.”

He’s sitting with one knee up - the one away from me, interestingly - arm resting on it, hand hanging down. He’s close enough that I could touch him without extending my arm all the way. But for his looks and clothing, he could be a farmer, a stable hand. I wonder how much of his life he spent living rough years. More than he spent as “The Darkling,” or less?

“I’d figure someone so old would have learned that by now,” I go on. “If it helps, I don’t know how old I am, either, not really. Quite your junior, I’m guessing. I’m curious because... well, because I’m curious in general, but also because you don’t look old enough to lead a prayer, never mind an army of people with superpowers.”

“Grisha don’t age the same way other people do. Our lives are longer, and we’re often older than we look. How much older depends on how much power we have to call on.”

I huff a sigh. “So in other words, ‘no.’ Well, I’ll just make up a number and go with that, then. Something really old, so it’s more interesting. If the whole ‘feared leader of the Second Army’ thing ever wears on you, you could make a killing selling skin care products.”

He sighs as if beleaguered and says, “I’m one hundred and twenty. Give or take.” I wonder how much practice it takes to lie so flawlessly, and what it must do to your conscience to live defaulting to that. My only reaction is a small noise to let him know I heard him.

“It’s very few people who know, but I have to admit, I usually get more of a reaction.”

“Experience-based expectation. Slightly less deadly.” I give the audible version of a shrug. “Grisha are different than everyone else. I’d be stupid not to have planned on being surprised and confounded regularly after I got into your coach. And as different as Grisha are from other people, you’re different from other Grisha, right?” I look up at the stars. “I suppose I should get used to the idea of a few extra years, myself.” I can’t help the distant weight in my voice. As odd as it is being here in the first place, I have no way to know if it’s permanent or temporary. Logically, I lean toward permanent, but it’s something I’ll never know for certain. I choose not to think about it. At all. Something in me will split like an over-watered tomato if I do.

“A Grisha’s life is based on their power, as I said. It’s rare, but there are ways to amplify that power.”

I sigh. "Great time to mention that. 'Good news, person who just expressed what was clearly _not_ joy at the idea of an alien lifespan! You can live _even longer!"_ I look over at him for the first time. “So how does a powerful being go about making itself more powerful?” It grates so much to play dumb that I have to clench my jaw to keep from grinding my teeth.

“Some creatures in the world carry the power within them. If a Grisha finds and kills one, claims a piece of it and wears that piece, its power belongs to them. Normally an amplifier is an animal, but sometimes, a Grisha is born with the ability.”

"That's awfully morbid," I note. I glance down. “When I was young, a woman came, a Corporalki. She was with two others. The examiners. She touched me and I felt....”

“A call?”

I nod.  
  
He looks at me. "Why did you fight it?"

I look away and grit my teeth. "Next question," I say, tone at odds with my physical tension.

“...That woman was an amplifier. Mirna, if I had to guess. She died several years ago in raid near the southern border. So am I. Much more powerful than most.”

 _Aren’t you a special flower,_ I want to say. I look over at him again, begrudgingly this time. Studying, looking for how he might feel about that. But of course someone might as well ask me how I feel about having brown hair; he’s had hundreds of years to come to terms with what he is. 

“Take my hand,” he says, holding it out.

I look down at it, then away, going back to staring into the distance. “I’ll take your word for it. So,” I go on quickly, “I’m guessing being a living amplifier is more of a boost than wearing a magical fur stole or something?”

It’s a moment before he answers. I know he’s looking at me, and I wonder what he sees. If he’s really looking at all, or just playing his part. “Just so, Alina.”

I clench my jaw. There is an edge in his voice when he says my name. Just small enough that anyone else would write it off, but the fact that it is there at all tells me that it was intentional. The Darkling doesn’t do such things on accident. His voice is a little too warm, a little too familiar. It is a seed, and it pisses me off. I’m not going to be nearly as easy as poor Alina would have been. I’m not lonely. I don’t need to belong. And lies and games make me seethe.

“You asked about me, I see,” carefully burying almost all of my annoyance.

“I had reports collected from a commanding officer and one of your apprentices before I left Kribursk. I have to admit, I was left with more questions than answers.”

“Not a normal feeling for you, I gather. It leaves us in the same boat in that way, at least. Is that why you hung back? Or were you just banking on the opportunity to make a grand entrance later?” I glance at him just long enough to give a twitch of my lips to dull the impertinent edge in my voice.

“I would much rather not have been delayed, but the lives of the powerful are rarely their own. I followed as soon as I could.”

“Well, you had good timing, anyway.” And way to not answer the question.

His lips twitch. It is a pleased thing, rather than mocking. “You were creative in what you did. It was well done. Not everyone would have thought so quickly.”

I look over at him, narrowing my eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re being condescending or if you’re actually trying to compliment me.”

“Would it be so strange if it was a compliment?”

“From a military leader with at least one hundred years of experience who has undoubtedly seen some things that are, I hope to God, more impressive than climbing on top of a carriage instead of running for the trees that were full of riflemen whose sole purpose it was to kill me? No, not at all.” I pause, then shrug. “I don’t like token compliments. I set off some flashes of light. Aside from the fact that the power itself was a myth until a few days ago, the execution wasn’t especially impressive. I can’t fight, so I just did what I could. I don’t want anyone dying for me.”

“You didn’t know you were Grisha until the day you walked into my tent, did you?” It isn’t really a question, but he still sounds almost disbelieving.

“What gave it away?” I ask churlishly.

“...What exactly do you know about our kind?”

 _Our_ kind. My jaw clenches. I assume he sees it, like I assume he sees everything. “Witches and demons or saviors and heroes, depending on who you ask. Pretty faces, lavish upbringings, well taught and trained. Long lives,” I add with a dip of my chin toward him.

“And Darklings?”

I shrug a shoulder.

“You must have heard stories.” In other words, ‘What is my starting point with you?’

“Same as other Grisha, only more. Soulless, evil, merciless and pitiless, cruel, terrifying, powerful, courageous, brilliant and heroic. Take your pick. If someone can think of something to say about you, it’s probably been said. People like to talk, and they love a good ghost story.”

“But what do _you_ think?”

“I think I don’t form opinions based on secondhand information,” I say, annoyance creeping into my voice. “Rumors and stories tell you more about the person passing them on than they ever do about the subject. Maybe five percent of any of the shit people say about you probably even remotely resembles the truth. On a good day.”

A hint of a smile tugs at one side of his mouth. “It seems my talent for not answering questions is contagious.”

I look at him straight on. “I did answer your question. I form my own opinions. I’ve heard things, and I’ll take them into account, but I just met you. I don’t know a thing about you. Other than the fact that you apparently like black, whether for political or personal or poetic reasons, that you’re excellent at reading and manipulating people, you’re exceptionally powerful and self-assured, you’re used to command, and your people seem to like you. But you lead more than you lord. Which, I begrudgingly admit, is a point in your favor.”

He looks at me, and I see his assessment of me change. I get the sense I’m being studied, scrutinized, and by someone who sees more than anyone I have ever known. “I think that qualifies as more than nothing.”

I shrug. “They’re just observations. I haven’t seen enough to know if they’re right, and everyone tends to see what they want to at first. The truth is important to me.” I wish, oh how I wish, he would take the jab personally. "You don't get the truth by being subjective and jumping to conclusions without enough information."

“Yet you seem confident in your observations.”

I turn to him again. “I’m not usually wrong about people. Most of them are easy. But you’re not most, and I'm not stupid enough to think doesn't make a difference. You’re something new. What is it exactly you’re looking for, here?” This time, I don’t keep the ire - or accusation - out of my tone. Any of it.

I see something flash behind his eyes and I would swear on my next, cherished meal that it looks almost like hurt, maybe surprise or dejection. I immediately feel like a lunatic for thinking that, until I remember something, and it sets my skin prickling. A conversation from another life, another world.

_“What about that thing you did?” I asked before I could lose my nerve. “To the Fjerdan?”_

_He looked back into the fire. “It’s called the Cut. It requires great power and great focus; it’s something few Grisha can do.”_

_I rubbed my arms, trying to stave off the chill that had taken hold of me._

_He glanced at me and then back to the fire. “If I had cut him down with a sword, would that make it any better?”_

_Would it? I had seen countless horrors in the last few days. But even after the nightmares of the Fold, the image that stayed with me, that reared up in my dreams and chased me into waking, was of the bearded man’s severed body, swaying in the dappled sunlight before it toppled onto me._

_“I don’t know,” I said quietly._

_Something flashed across his face, something that looked like anger or maybe even pain. Without another word, he rose and walked away from me._

_I watched him disappear into the darkness and felt suddenly guilty._ Don’t be a fool, _I chastised myself._ He’s the Darkling. He’s the second most powerful man in Ravka. He’s one hundred and twenty years old! You didn’t hurt his feelings. _But I thought of the look that had flickered over his features, the shame in his voice when he’d talked about the Black Heretic, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed some kind of test._

A thought that no part of me is prepared to have creeps in. He manipulated that Alina. He had done it because he felt it was the best course of action. But the ability to finally use the Fold as a weapon was never all he had wanted from her. He had wanted his companion, his companion, and no matter how he dealt with her in the beginning, he had thought that eventually she would be that person.

What if she _had_ failed a test that night - _this_ night? What if he had set out to find how like-minded, or perhaps simply open-minded she might be before he decided how much of himself would be a fabrication? What angle he would have to take? What if he had wanted to give her a chance first?

That doesn’t sound like him, but the truth is - and I realize this with icy clarity and a twist of something like nausea - I don’t know him. I know things _about_ him, yes, but one of those things is how good he is at playing any given part, how willing to step into any role to further his goals. _Make me your villain,_ he had said to Alina, because that was what she had decided of him, and he had played that part flawlessly time and again because of it. Because when you know what someone expects, it makes them predictable and easy to manipulate.

I had come into this thinking I was prepared. But suddenly I feel outside of myself with the realization of exactly how possible it is that I know almost _nothing_ about the man sitting next to me.

I must do an abysmal job of hiding my thoughts, the crush of something somewhere between fear and pain, because the upset passes from his face like a wisp of cloud over the sun and turns into something else. He doesn’t get up and walk away, and when something like understanding pulls his features, I suddenly can’t figure out who is testing whom. Suddenly, I don’t feel on top, I don't feel in control, and it is horrifying.

“You aren’t what I was expecting, either,” he says.

I look at my hands, and my brows draw together because I feel ashamed at how standoffish and almost hostile I’m being. It’s beyond stupid. “Given that you weren’t expecting me at all,” I say quietly, “I’m not sure how to take that.”

“I don’t exactly know how I mean it yet." It actually sounds honest, and isn't that a laugh. "But I have been expecting you, Alina. Hoping for you.” He takes a deep breath as if bracing himself. “My great-great-great grandfather was the Black Heretic. Every Darkling since has tried to undo the damage he did to our country, and I’m no different.” I have to turn away slightly to hide the anger that I can’t keep down. I fake a look around the room to cover it. “I’ve spent my life searching for a way to make things right. You’re the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in a long time.”

That last sentence, at least, I can believe.

“No pressure at all, then,” I mutter to myself. I look at him and say, “The Black Heretic was a Grisha of legendary power. Maybe he was a lunatic. Maybe he was a visionary. Maybe he was just a moron with too much power.” His face is a perfect mask as I hurl insults at him. It is almost infuriating. “I know you’re going to have me trained and taught and whatever else, but what exactly am I supposed to do against a swath of living darkness fifty miles wide and eight and a half times that long that’s alive with winged horrors? I’m not a god. You want to stand with me and hold my hand to give me that super-strong boost, find me some mythical creature whose bones I can wear as earrings, fine, but even then, do you really think I’m going to be able to undo all that? Or am I just supposed to live my life guarding caravans and hoping none of the assassins sent for me get lucky?”

He looks at me a moment before he replies. “Do you know what you did on the Fold, Alina?”

“Yeah. I got my back sliced open and let people get carried off and eaten.”

He shakes his head and looks at me seriously. “I’m talking about the one you cut in half, do you know what that was?”

“I’m guessing from your delivery that the answer isn’t as obvious as ‘a basic Grisha ability,’” I say, flat and perturbed.

“No. It’s called the Cut. It requires great concentration, and great _power._ Including you, there are now two Grisha in the world who can use it." That answers my idiot question about whether the game had begun yet. Lying sack of crap. "I'm the other. It took me more than ten years to learn, and I had a teacher who had been using it for over a century.”

My face goes slack.

“You appeared out of nowhere. You walked off a skiff after one of the worst attacks on the Fold I've heard of, half dead, and straight to me. I still don't know how you got into the pavilion. And you used one of the most rare, powerful techniques a Grisha can conceive of the first time you called on your powers. I’m not worried.”

Suddenly I wonder if poor Alina was quite as piteous as I’ve thought, because I cannot deny that this man has something that goes beyond magnetism. He is his own field of gravity. I remember Genya saying that all Grisha feel that pull toward him, and now I know what it is to feel it. How easy it would be to fall into that pool.

“Every Darkling has hoped for you, Alina. We knew that if we existed, so must our opposite. We have chased rumors and legends over every land and sea. We have planned and hoped and waited. Right now, all you have to worry about is getting to Os Alta. Then, all you have to worry about is training. I’ll take care of everything else. I promise.”

 _Yeah, I’ll bet you will,_ I think darkly.

“I don’t want my life lived for me,” I say quietly, and I look him right in the eye as I do, serious and unwavering. “You’re here talking to me, what, to make me feel better about all of this? To welcome me into the ranks personally, give me something to hold onto, some new sense of loyalty and purpose? To plant a seed? You’re not stupid, you know you just took me away from everything I’ve ever known,” _and you have no damned idea,_ I think. “Or is it just the poetry of finally meeting your opposite, the culmination of all that searching and waiting? Is it the magnetism of what you and your ancestors have dreamed about coming to life, sitting in a barn and being standoffish, mulish, and moderately insulting?”

God help me, he _smiles,_ and something in my chest twists, contracts with shooting pain. A visible tremor runs over me and I can feel something like fear on my face.

His smile falters and sympathy, I think, takes its place. After a moment, he looks toward the fire. “I was born into my role. I was trained and educated for it from the beginning. I knew exactly what I existed for, what my job was, what was expected of me, the legacy I had to uphold. I never had a choice, not really, because no one else can do what I can. No one else is willing to. No one knows what it’s like to have this singular kind of power. To be alone in the world, as I have been from the beginning.” He pauses, then looks at me seriously. “You won’t go through that. I'm not going to tell you it won't be hard, that you won't be alone, that you're not different, because you are. But you’ll have someone who knows what it’s like to be set apart, even from other Grisha. Especially from other Grisha. Sometimes all the similarity does is remind you of the difference." He pauses. "You and I are the only ones of our kind."

Oh, what Baghra would have to say.

“I did come over to try to make you feel like you might have a place, yes. But the truth is, I’m curious about you, too. I’ve been alone all my life. I’ve had to be. Even when I wanted it to be another way, there wasn’t anyone who could understand what it’s like to be so different. Until now.”

My throat goes dry. “...I'm not a person to you,” I say, and it’s almost a whisper. It's certainly wary, and I think it's sad, too.

He looks at me oddly for a long moment. “Quite the opposite, Alina.”

I huff a bitter breath. As long as he has lived, it’s probably everyone else who isn’t quite real. And God knows how he sees his mother these days. But I shake my head, angry and unwilling to play along with this one.

"No," I say. "No. You don't know the first thing about me, and you already have me slated as filling some hole in your life. Whether you hope for it or expect it, it's the same thing. When you look at someone like that, someone you just met, it either means they're some kind of soul mate, or you see them as a role or a job and not a person. And I am sure as shit no one's soul mate. For all you know, I'm gay."

He arches a brow, very much _presumptuous, don't you think?_ , like he's going to turn it back around on me, but all I do is scowl. He leans his head back against the wall and takes a breath. "I don't expect anything from you, Alina," he says seriously. "But when you live as long as I have, the world turns gray. It offers very little by way of hope, especially to a Darkling, and it would be that way even without the legacy I live under. I won't deny myself that hope when it sneaks into my pavilion, bloodied, demands my attention, and points out that I've been waiting for it. You think you're nothing more than an idea to me, a tool, perhaps, when the truth is that you are the most real person I have met in my life."

I can’t do anything but look at him while trying to make it seem like I'm not looking at him. He just won the conversation in a sweeping victory, why is he still just sitting there?  
  
“I’m....” My nails dig into my palms. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I know how to be alone. That's pretty much all I know." Dear God, the understatement. "Which isn't some sort of bonding thing I'm putting out there, it's me saying... that's what I know. So I’m just... I’m going to go to bed, and see if I can get more than an hour of sleep after this.” I push up to my feet without preamble and brush dirt and old hay off my backside. “Goodnight.”

I understand that given the confession he just made, a decent person should be reaching out somehow, letting him know they hear him, that they respect his admission. Something. Anything. But I'm not necessarily a decent person, and I don't know yet if I have anything I can or am willing to give him. Plus, he's a fucking liar, and when you know that about someone, someone as good at acting as he can be, it because all but impossible to tell the lies from the truth. 

He'd only get bored if I made it easy, anyway.

“You haven't been sleeping well.” He says. His voice is unperturbed, and I can only guess why he’s denying me my graceless exit. I stop, but I don't turn around. It says too much, I know it does. 

 _I have lived a long life, rich in grief,_ he had once said. Had yet to say. _If I still felt as you do, if I ached as you do, I could not have borne this eternity._

My face clouds. “That seems like all I do. Even given our pace it seems... exuberant. Well, that and wanting to eat my weight every third hour.” I turn around, resting my hands on my waist.

“It will be better once we get to the Little Palace. You'll have a better bed and better food. As much as you want." He turns one of his palms up and a little collection of darkness gathers there as he watches it. "A Grisha's abilities are meant to be used. They are a part of us. When we deny them, we grow weak and ill. Fighting the truth of what we are takes a toll on us."

My eyes are riveted to the living shadow in his hand. I have the urge to ask if I can feel it. Is it cold? Warm? Does it feel like anything at all? “I’m already changing,” I allow. “I’m exhausted, but I feel stronger. More real, maybe. My hair is healthier, what I can feel of my skin under the salt and dirt isn’t as dry or sallow. I’d swear I’m even,” I put a hand to the dark gray corecloth below my chest, “filling out." Hilarious, given how hungry I always am. "Reshaping.” It could be swelling from all the riding, but I don't think so. I may never feel my ass again, though.

I can hear a smile in his voice. “I suspect you’ve only seen the beginning.”

“...Well if that isn't the double entendre of the decade,” I mutter, just loud enough for him to hear. "Thanks for the pep-talk or whatever." Whatever the hell that was.   
  
I turn and hobble gracelessly away without another word. I can feel more than one set of eyes on me, and maybe it's because I'm a legend come to life in the skin of a sickly-looking woman. Maybe it's that the Darkling spent so long talking with me. Or maybe it's them waiting for the wrath of God almighty to fall on my head at how disrespectful I was to him. In any case, despite what I said to the Darkling, I'll be asleep in minutes and won't have to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes from Shadow and Bone in this chapter, obvos. <3
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 9/30/17 (my birthday! :D): Minor dialogue tweaks  
> 10/2/17: Further minor tweaks, mostly for ooc stuff. Not to the typoes, sadly.  
> 10/4/17: DL saying there are three Grisha in the world who can use the Cut has been reduced to two  
> 12/13/17: Tweaks and small additions to the barn conversation


	6. Grumpcat

It’s one of very few times I’ve been near Ivan but not the Darkling. It’s one of very _many_ times I appreciate the fact that he's had to trade horses with one of the lighter soldiers. I don't think his mount would survive, otherwise.

“Why aren’t there any Tidemakers?” I ask him, voice bouncing in time with my up-and-down motion as I counter my horse’s gait.

“Now who’s being vague?”

“I wanted to fit in,” I deadpan, salty. “What I mean is, why didn’t he send any Tidemakers with the coach? Or bring any with him... self? Him? With his party.”

“We’re not exactly crossing a wetland.” He does a marvelous impression of someone who's talking to an idiot.

I roll my eyes and give him an unamused look. “Come on. Seriously? Do you really think you should be playing dumb? _You?”_

His expression tells me he’s not playing anything.

“Tidemakers. Ivan, people are like ninety percent water. Do you seriously expect me to believe that no one has put that together? I thought you people lived and breathed science.”

I see the moment he realizes what I’m saying. I see the moment understanding passes behind his eyes; his face goes slack and intense all at once.

 _”Seriously?”_ I practically squawk. “Not even the Darkling?” I ask with a snort, though I have lowered my voice considerably. “Next you’re going to tell me you don’t know what happens to peoples' heartbeats when they lie.”

Now he is glaring at me. It is not an 'of course I know' glare.

I balk. My cheeks flush at my inexcusable slip-up.

I sniff, playing unaffected which, with my cheeks, is hideously pointless. “...That was a test,” I say flatly. “Congratulations, you passed.” I kick my horse into a gallop and leave Ivan behind, cursing silently.

That’s going to make it back to the Darkling, of course. I honestly didn't think that no one in their science-minded world would have noticed the body’s reactions to telling lies. Then again, I’m basically living in medieval times now. Sort of. If I do anything too sciency, too smart or clever when I'm in the wrong company... well, suddenly the existence of the drüskelle takes on a new light. And I'm reminded that every one of the Ravkan's venerated saints was martyred for doing something too impressive. For doing the thing they're later worshipped for. I wonder how many people have ever considered the irony.

This is going to be fantastic. -_-

 

* * * * *

 

I would swear on my life that the bones in my ass have grown spikes and that there’s nothing left between them and my skin by the time we reach the stupid, horrible capitol. Which would work out, because I want to die. I believe my saddle is also padded with gravel and covered in large-grit sandpaper. 

The scenery would prove wonderfully diverting if I didn’t want to burn the place and everyone in it to the ground just so I could get off my horse that much faster. The phenomenally consuming smell of filth is also diverting. I clench my hands much, much too tightly to keep from covering my nose. A First Army soldier would be used to nausea-inducing body odor and... other things. Between that and knowing my rest is a matter of what feels like inches away, I am practically vibrating with impatience. We’re almost there, why have we slowed to a walk _now?_ Because God hates me, that’s why. Because God hates me and so help me I _will_ set fire to this entire place if I have to sit on this saddle more than another thirty seconds. Perhaps I can have it set aside so I can at least burn _it_  later, then spit in the ashes and throw them to the bottom of whatever constitutes a bathroom here. The mouth of hell would also suffice.

Despite the pain shooting through every millimeter of my body, the Palace district, once we pass through the expansive golden gates, _is_ distracting. It helps that the smell becomes almost instantly better. Everything is suddenly polished and manicured, the stone light and gentle instead of dark and abused, everything in perfect repair. The Grand Palace has been looming since the city came into view, but when we come up near enough to it that I can’t _help_ but look at it, I pull my horse to a stop despite my flinty pain, and recklessly pull one of my legs up to curl it under me. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s a new kind of uncomfortable, and that is such a relief that I could cry.

I have never been in front of a palace before. It’s like coming face to face with a mountain or a great waterfall, or standing up somewhere impossibly high and taking in miles and miles of scenery all at once. The circular fountain out from its wide, imperious entrance is large enough to serve as a children’s pool for probably half the kids who must be in this city. At once. It is almost comically gaudy, but impressively, the water is clear and every stone scrubbed clean.

When the question comes, I realize my mouth has been open.

“So what do you think of it?” It wasn’t hard for him to sneak up on me, not with as numb and surly as I am, and not with so many indistinguishable clopping hooves.

I glance at him, then turn my face to the grandiose crenelated arch at the top of wide marble steps that serves as a main entrance. The wide, embellished courtyard that looks like it surrounds the whole thing. I crane my neck back to take in the palace's cathedral-like height. Every space that could be reasonably - by a lunatic’s standards - used to house some sort of embellishment or decoration holds two, and there is an obscene amount of gold. I doubt gold leaf is a thing yet, so trying to even think about the weight of all of it, let alone the cost is just... no. I think, _Well at least it creates lots of jobs, keeping all of it so shiny._ But then I remember servants don’t get paid.

“I think....” I say slowly, letting my eyes fall back to him. I glance around surreptitiously to make sure no one is too close, and lower my voice a little. “I think I don’t have a polite answer for that.” I smile at him tightly and give my horse's sides a gentle nudge. Fortunately, most everyone else had kept moving while I stopped, so I don’t have to pretend not to know what direction to head in.

The Darkling keeps up, riding next to me. It makes me surly; I assume either he wants us to be seen entering together, or he’s doing that 'make her feel like she's not alone' thing. _Hi, I'm the Darkling, I'll be your emotional guard and savior. You should totally trust me, I'm the best._ To be fair, this _would_ be an impossibly stressful situation for probably anyone else. So naturally, he wants to capitalize on it. And I want to hit him upside his stupid, flawless, disgustingly clean and unrumpled head. Perhaps he has had Fabrikators imbue his skin cream to be dirt-proof and self-exfoliating.

Once we’re a little further from the First Army soldiers, I say to him quietly, “That thing looks like the wet dream of someone with massive overcompensation issues. No pun intended. Also, sorry if that's too vulgar." _So, so very sorry,_  I think drily.

He laughs, and I can't hide my surprise. It transforms his whole face, and I understand, too, what Alina meant all those times he did something that suddenly made him look "human." It is a full expression, unrestrained, warm, vivid. My heart is stuttering. He has a _beautiful_ laugh. I almost don't care that it's probably fake.

Before whatever emotion that's choking me can affect my vocal chords, I say with more seriousness, "Honestly, what bothered me was looking at all that when I know how starved the rest of the country is. In every sense of the word. It's always the poor who suffer first, most, worst, and longest. The people who really need help that are least likely to get it. That, and the army the King is supposed to be supporting and supplying. The one he doesn't seem to understand that is, in actuality, keeping Fjerda and the Shu Han from bowling over his people on their way to burn his pretty house. I understand needing to look strong in front of ambassadors or whatever, needing the nobles who fund and support you to think you're strong, but I don't personally see a problem with an _enemy_ thinking we're weak when we're not. Bluster like this is always transparent, anyway, and anyone with half a brain and a decent spy network could find out our country's pretty much in the crapper."

He’s quiet for too long, so I glance over and find his face inscrutable.  
  
"Uh... figuratively speaking. ...Oooor I could apologize profusely and beg you not to turn me over for treason?" I look away.

"Actually, I agree with you."

I do not entirely succeed in not gaping openly at him. To take the weight off, I go back to my argument. "People in the First Army talk. Everyone talks. About everything, but especially the people in charge. I know what he is."

"I thought you didn't put stock in rumors."

"Yeah, well, there are rumors, and then there are...  _rumors._ Pardon me for relying on the safety of the Sun Summoner card again so soon by saying that I wouldn't mind if he took a short trip down a long flight of stairs." My face scrunches up a little. "Something less horrible, though." I pause. "I suppose you can't really hint at wishing for someone's untimely demise in a way that's  _not_ horrifying, though. His spawn, too, if we're making a list. Well, the older one."

"But not the younger son?"

I shrug. “I’ve heard good things. My favorite is that he has nothing to do with said prince or his idiot 'father.'”

"He's still the King, Alina. Whatever else he may be."

I look at him in shock. He's defending the man?

"He is all the things you've said, and worse. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have power. And the weak don't like to be challenged." He gives me a look - his version of a look - as he says, "People talk, as you pointed out."

I have to stop myself from glancing around, even though I've been carefully watching and listening for anyone nearby. And even though I know, logically, that he wouldn't have let me keep talking like that if anyone was around. When I take a moment to think about that, I have to admit he's right. I give a little sigh. "I'll... be more careful."

"Good," he says quietly. "I've waited a long time for you. I have no intention of letting anyone take you away now."

I have to swallow. He is entirely, completely too good at this.

Before I can point out that he's laying it on a little thick, he adds, "I'm glad you felt safe telling me this, Alina."

I want to tell him that's not why I did it, just to argue the idea he seems to have that I'm already falling into his lap. So to speak. Then again, better he thinks I'm somewhere mentally or emotionally that I'm not. So I turn enough to raise a brow at him. "You hate him, too. I figured if I could be honest about it with anyone...."  
  
"What makes you say that?"

I look at him, unamused and doing nothing to hide it. "Common sense? He's selfish and self-serving. And an idiot. You haven't really struck me as the type who would be a fan of gross incompetence in general, and given that you're a leader and you take that seriously - a leader, not a boss - it probably bothers you more from the one person who outranks you than it could from anyone else. You don't seem like you'd let laws - treason laws, for instance - control the way you think. You're...." I trail off, eyes slipping down his frame.  _Other. You're Other. Someone who has lived too long to be held by the things that bind the rest of us._  

"Hopefully," I say instead as I turn to stare down my horse's nose, "you're not a fan of the way he likes to treat women, either." I count on him misinterpreting the change in my tone. 

This time when he's quiet for too long, I don't look at him.

"To get back to your question about the younger Prince, it would be nice to have a good man on the throne. Well, a good man, and a competent one. If you don't have both the whole thing is pretty useless."

"Those would be good qualities," he agrees smoothly. "Unfortunately, that isn't all it takes to rule."

I snort, and he looks over at me. He looks a little surprised, actually. Genuinely surprised. I don't know how I can tell the difference with him, and I have to assume I'm wrong anyway _because_ it's him, but overall I've learned to trust my instincts. I may not be able to break down what, specifically, on a person's face and body tells me what it does, but that doesn't change the message. I remind myself that I'm not Alina; whatever he's doing, he's doing to hook the person he has seen in _me._  Reverse-engineering his attempts later will be fascinating.

"No," I say. "But I think that any ruler without those things will more likely be a tyrant at best. Even if they think they have the best of intentions."

 

* * * * *

 

We pass through a small forest to get to the Little Palace. Not an arch made by a row of trees, but a forest. The passage through it looks like some nature spirit wove branches together with meticulous care, down to the smallest twig. One moment we’re in a medieval city, a towering castle at our backs, cream stone shot through with gold underneath the odd pile of horse dung being ground in by hooves, and the next....

I know what to expect of the Little Palace, just like I know what to expect of everything else. And yet I couldn't have expected this, not really. The grounds are massive almost beyond description, more of a nature preserve than anything. And it _is_  a preserve - short of the lush open space bigger than the footprint of the entire Grand Palace twice over, everything is forest, needles mixed with leaves. To the right is the lake, much bigger than I expect. I imagine Tidemakers must have picnics out on the island every chance they get.

This place is the polar opposite of the artificial, man-made grandeur of Os Alta. I call it Os Alta in my head, because no idiot would think we are still there in any but the most technical sense. The King’s ancestors plowed over the land, tore it down and created something else over its remains, reshaped as they bellowed like lions. Presumably. But this space exists as a place should; this space doesn't shout, doesn't scream its value like some obnoxiously loud animal in heat. This place  _listens._

The palace itself.... When it comes into sight at the bottom of a massive, downward-rolling slope of trimmed green, my breath catches. Without a thought, I slip from my saddle just so I can better take it in.

It is all rich, dark wood and burnished golden domes, and though it is breathtakingly tall and utterly massive, it doesn’t stand on its own, a jewel on a crown. It is not a centerpiece. I can tell it will be stunning even from this distance, when the carvings all over its wall look like no more than flaws or tricks of the light. It is stunning in the way of a waterfall - not to _be_ anything, but simply because it is. It is as if it is a piece of the woods that surround it, as much a natural phenomenon as the archway that leads to this wonder, that gates it off from the rest of the world. I am strangled by emotion at the sight of it.

If I had eternity to spend and a home to make for myself and my people, it would look exactly like this. Except I would never have had the vision to create something so perfect.

I feel it settle in me like a hook. I feel it acutely: a crack in my perfect armor, because I know he created all of this. The same thing would happen if I walked in on him flawlessly playing some breathtaking piece of music. And this is a game that is always over the moment the first move is made. Cold dread settles around me like a blanket.

“Welcome to the Little Palace,” his cool voice says from above and to my left. I look at up him, my brows pinched together in some mixture of pain and fear and wonder, and all he does is smile as if he knows what is going through my mind, and urge his horse on.

 

* * * * *

 

I can’t be more relieved or standoffish when the Darkling makes his bow and heads toward his rooms. Priority one is to restore my armor, and I can't do that if I'm anywhere near him. No, I need to be alone.

The instant I fall into step behind the elderly servant woman he has just whispered instructions to, I began bracing myself.

It isn’t enough. If I had it to do five times more, it wouldn't be enough.

The stairs off of the door she leads me through, one of very few in the main hall, these just to the right adjacent wall of the Darkling’s chambers, are grand and wide and beautiful and I want to do no more than claw the carpeting up with my bare hands, vomit on the wood underneath, and scratch the shining banister with a fistful of nails. I want a lift. I want a palanquin. I would take a piggyback ride, even smelling as I do. I am tempted to turn around, get back on my horse, and ride it up the steps. Or perhaps if I ask nicely, I can just borrow the Darkling's room for a while. I could sleep on a bunk in his guard quarters.

By the time I reach the top of the stairs, which I now know to be enchanted so that they appear only half as tall as they actually are, it is all I can do not to be scaling them on my hands and feet. I don't, however, have the pride to try to mask the wheezing of my lungs or to keep my back straight any longer. I am mere feet from privacy; all sense of decorum left me somewhere around the twenty-second stair.

Somehow, another, younger maid is waiting by the last door on the left at the end of the hallway - my door, I surmise. Door _s._  There are two of them, and they're standing open. From what little I can see inside as we near, the room is massive and lavish, more of a suite than a bed chamber. But I want to know how the other maid is here. I can't see the servants knowing about the secret passages, unless there's a separate set just for them. Had someone taken off at a mad sprint the moment I had turned my head to take in the main hall, gone to summon another servant and told her to get here before us? And if so, how is she not panting? What other way is there for most people to get here than the stairs? Suddenly I think this wing and I may become mortal enemies. Or perhaps this is some sort of elaborate plan designed to make me question my own sanity. It's working, if so.

When the young woman asks if I want anything - as I’m entering the room, looking agape at the high ceiling like the peasant I am - I tell her, “A bath. Faster than humanly possible, please and thank you. I don’t even care if it’s hot, just so long as it’s wet and it's here yesterday. And whatever things you have to work some sort of miracle,” I gesture up and down myself, taking in the heavy, floor-to-ceiling golden curtains (seriously, had someone sent these people a messenger bird? ‘SUN SUMMONER IMMINENT. MAKE READY.’) “and make it look like I’m not a descendant of mud people. A separate large pitcher of water, too, please.” To rinse the filthy bath water off. I didn’t know if that's standard practice, and I'm not about to out myself by asking something that's probably so basic. I’ll be damned if I'm going to let a bunch of bossy old women strip me down, scrub me raw, and nag me to hurry up right after they wake me from what should be, if there is a merciful God, at least two days’ uninterrupted sleep.

By the time the bath comes, I'm pacing ceaselessly, bouncing up and down, and shaking out my arms as if they're made of rubber just to keep from falling asleep standing up. The young servant is back with six other people, all but two of whom are carrying buckets of water. One has a large pitcher, and another a tray of bottles and brushes. I wonder if I'll recognize any of them when I wake, or if this will all end up seeming like some sort of fever dream. Maybe, because they stand around waiting. After a long, awkward moment, I figure out it's to bathe me. Telling them  _no, thank you_ would likely also be awkward if I were awake.

When I'm conscious again, the bathing room will have me gaping like a lunatic at its beauty. Presently, I'm too busy trying to keep my vision from blurring, and stripping out of my clothing before the servants are even out of the other room. I'm told to lock my door, to which I readily assent. I will not be locking my door. Just like other people aren't going to bathe and dress me, Genya Safin can spare me a few extra moments of sleep and let her own damn self in.  
  
The bottles and brushes and a fluffy-looking sponge, all laid out for me by the bath, seem easy enough to figure out. Between texture and whether or not something lathers, I figure I can tell what’s what well enough. It's (almost) literally all I can do to rub various abrasive things over my skin and nails with enough force for them to do anything. I have to talk myself out of falling asleep in the tub several times, but by the end I can't remember why it's a bad idea. Is it a bad idea? But I bumble my way through scrubbing myself immaculate - I'm certain I've done a good job, because every inch of my skin is now raw - rinse with the extra water, which is now bracingly cold, and wrap a large, surprisingly fluffy towel around myself. Then I stumble forward and literally fall forward onto the bed, not even bothering to pull my legs all the way onto the mattress. I'm out within seconds.

 

* * * * *

 

“Uhrgrggrpfffpt--kshhfffpbt-- Leh yourshelf in!” I bark angrily and drunkenly in answer to the pounding that has finally woken me up.

I’m swearing vehemently under my breath and fighting to push myself up off the mattress. I fail, and fall back into it until someone’s voice harping at me to get up gives me the will to live. Or to be more precise, seriously considering homicide gives me the will to live.

I hear the whole lot of them come in, but most are immediately excused, which pulls up a deeply vindictive, satisfying sense of victory in me. Under its power, I manage to make it to the end of the bed, sitting with my feet on the floor, appallingly hunched over, with my towel bunched indelicately around my thighs. I poke them - they're so small. So... bones. I watch one last servant hang the new First Army uniform near a dressing screen by the window, and then it is just me and The Tailor.

I had gotten a decent look at Zoya as she had passed by in her carriage, perfect black curls being tossed in the wind. She had been unfairly, disgustingly beautiful. The sort of beautiful that is the same thing as an ocean. You know it exists, but unless you see one, stand at its edge and know what it is to feel like nothing, it isn’t truly real. It’s a fable, a good story.

Zoya had been beautiful. Genya looks downright inhuman. She is the child of someone twice as beautiful as Zoya and an actual, literal angel. I can’t look at her. It’s embarrassing, like doing so would break some sort of rule. She's so _other,_ I have no idea where to even begin.

“All Saints, your _hair,”_ she wails. “What did you do?”

“I took a bath,” I say, scrunching my shoulders upward little.

“You couldn’t have braided it?”

Annoyance lets me look up at her. I find eyes of such a perfect gold that they are arresting. They... Yes. My god, they actually gleam when the light hits them. It’s perfectly subtle, but it’s there. “I was a little preoccupied with not passing out on the floor,” I snipe. Also, I hadn’t thought to do it. An irrelevant detail. “Just... who cares? Put it in a knot or whatever. I’m a ratty First Army soldier, remember?”

She arches a brow at me, and doesn't insult me with an answer. "Do you know who I am?" She asks. It's a polite - if politely harried and tried - question. A verbal olive branch. Do we already need an olive branch?

“Genya,” I say peevishly. “You’re here to make me look pretty because I’m going to meet the King, but not too pretty, because I’m going to meet the King. Who is a disgusting, horrible rapist, and not kicking him in his shriveled disgusting junk will be the single greatest challenge of my entire life. Sound about right so far?”

She blinks rapidly at me. “Who....” Then abruptly, she looks annoyed. “My name isn’t _Gen_ ya, it’s Genya. Like ‘gem.’ 'Jewel' 'Just here because I owe someone a favor.'” I blink dumbly at her, feeling a flush creeping up my stupid, godforsaken cheeks, and I'm too owned by it to joke or snipe back. “Who told you I was coming if you were so asleep you couldn’t be bothered to see to your hair?” she asks.

“Maybe I just don’t care what it looks like,” I say acidly. I push myself up off the bed and go for the changing screen, grabbing the new uniform as I pass. “I’m sorry I got your name wrong,” I say mulishly as I duck behind it and throw my towel indelicately over the side. The words are supposed to be sincere, but all that comes out is my peevish upset at the fact that I have missed something so monstrously obvious. That I could stumble so horribly so early. “I’ll... dress as fast as I can so you can work whatever unicorn magic you have at your disposal to make me presentable,” I add in an attempt to ease my spectacular dickishness so far. “And I’m sorry for the hair.” That, at least, comes out in the right tone.

I hear the clink of bottles and vials as they are taken from her kit and set out on the ornate vanity, and she is too well-conditioned to be muttering insults under her breath.

Dressing takes longer than it should, mostly because there are pieces of clothing that I’m certain are supposed to be a bra and underwear, and they are completely inscrutable. Eventually, I just hide them behind the curtain and move on to everything else. Boots and pants with laces. A shirt and jacket with buttons. Sensible things that don’t require wizardry to use. Wizardry every five year-old probably knows.

This is getting terrifically obnoxious. I'm fairly certain I'm going to have an aneurysm or apoplectic fit before the week is out.

 

* * * * *

 

I get a look at myself for the first time when Genya has me sit in front of the questionably large vanity. Starkov resembles a plague survivor who has never heard the words "nutrition" or "sleep" or "smile" in all her life. When the Tailor finishes, however, I actually look like a healthy adult, but only just. The transformation would be akin to making a normal person look like... well, the Tailor.

My dull, middle-brown hair has been smoothed and lightened half a shade and, yes, twisted into a tidy knot low on my head. Genya cleaned up the patchiness and blemishes on my skin, got rid of the stains under my eyes, darkened my eyelashes, and added just a touch of color to my cheeks and lips. Passable, but unremarkable. Which is what makes it _quite_ remarkable.

“You really know what you’re doing,” I comment when she’s done.

“I’ll take that as a ‘thank you,’” she sniffs.

“Are you supposed to thank someone for doing something you didn’t give permission for and had no say in?”

“I haven't met many First Army soldiers. Are they always this ungrateful? ”

“Only ungrateful to disgustingly, impossibly beautiful women who wake them up when they haven’t slept properly in almost two weeks and would love nothing more than to set the world on fire if it meant they could go back to bed for even five minutes.” I pause long enough to suck in a breath. “Besides, you strike me as the type who enjoys a tasteful cosmetic challenge.” I let a little smile on my lips. “I am grateful,” I say, my voice losing its insincere edge. “Really.” I look down and toy with the clean, pressed fabric of my trousers, a little crease between my brows. “I just... a lot has happened. A lot. I don't think I've processed it, and it turns out I might be kind of angry about it. Plus like twenty-five percent conscious.” I scrunch up my nose. ”I feel like I’ve been guzzling alcohol for two days.”

“...Well. At least you know how to have fun.”

I huff a dry, quiet laugh.

“I don’t know what happened to get you here,” she finally says, “or what the journey was like. If the marks on your back are any indication,” I flush, realizing I hadn’t even remembered they were there when I had moved behind the dressing screen, “it was quite a trip. Once you get through the meeting with the King, you should be able to rest. Just... keep your head down,” she says. There's wariness under her warming tone. She has perhaps noticed a slightly churlish lean to my personality.

I consider her, then remember that I wanted something. “I _am_ grateful,” I repeat. “But do you know, if you could do something about my cheeks so they stop turning red every five minutes, I might just pledge myself to your service.”

She laughs, and it is a high, beautiful sound, as contagious as a child’s. “Darling, people offer me much more for much less on a regular basis. But I can help. Although women usually want the opposite. Maidenly blushing was very in fashion last winter.” Her expression turns subtle, her voice careful and a little gentle. “I can do something about the scarring, too, on your back. A good Healer will be able to reduce it, but I can hide it completely. If you want to go to the banya or swimming in the lake, or wear a low-cut gown.”

I feel almost seasick at the reminder that the godforsaken ball is coming. “I might take you up on that," I hedge. "But not unless I have to. I don’t mind scars. They tell stories. They remind you.”

She smiles at me. It is honest and adult, and, I think, almost a little approving. “Come on. They're waiting downstairs. You don't want to be late.”

“Don’t I, though?” I rise to another peal of beautiful laughter.

Still, _still_ I feel a nonexistent saddle between my thighs.

 

* * * * *

 

I ignore the hush that greets me in the main hall. I walk next to Genya as if I can’t see every face, teenaged to “elderly,” fixed on me. I try to ignore the feeling that I’m being judged, measured. I probably am, but not in the way I fear. Graceful, striking beauty in every direction I turn is something I need to get used to as fast as possible. But I didn't grow up surrounded by it like all of them did. It's like walking through a room of demigods who are five feet taller than me and trying to casually blend in. Honesty, I'm starting to wonder how it's possible for Grisha to hide themselves from the Second Army. If they use their power, they look perfect in a world of the imperfect. If they don't, they look like death walking. I'm amazed Mal hasn't been forced into a room with an amplifier more than once on suspicion.

The moment we near, a tall, broad-chested Grisha steps forward from the main cluster of deep crimson. He ignores Genya completely, which has me narrowing my eyes at him. He's in a black-trimmed uniform, looks to be about nineteen, has deeply tanned skin, and apparently can’t see far enough past his nose to realize that I’m pissed. Sergei. Which means he’s only seventeen or so. He bows low as his name pours from his lips. I dearly want to interrupt him and tell him I already know who he is, if only to get him to shut up that much sooner. But if I do, he’ll assume the recently-arrived Sun Summoner has already heard about him and get even more insufferable than he already is.

I melt my expression to something utterly bland, not offering him even the most basic acknowledgement, never mind a greeting in return. He barely falters. Just flashes straight, white teeth and says, “Come, let me introduce you. You’ll be walking with us.” It's all I can do to choke down on a laugh. Apparently the effort makes me look ill, because he gives me an odd, concerned look. I wonder if he is a distant relative of Ivan.

When Sergei takes me by the elbow in a gentlemanly fashion to accompany me forward, he almost immediately jerks to a stop at my unexpected intransigence. When he looks back, surprised, it's to see me glaring frigid, bloody murder at his hand on me. When my eyes slide up to his, he cannot release me fast enough.

“She’s a _Summoner,_ Sergei,” a young woman argues behind me, her voice smugly amused. Marie. She stands at the front of a group of darkest blue, has porcelain skin and flowing brown curls so perfectly smooth, they would take literal hours to cultivate on a normal person. “She walks with us.” I try not to sigh. I'm unsuccessful, but I do manage to keep it quiet. There are murmurs of assent from the other Etherealki behind her. The older Grisha are clustered around the room in their own smaller, color-specific groups. They seem content to watch with interest.

“Marie,” Sergei says as if she’s a small child who's just told a clever joke, “you can’t possibly be suggesting that she enter the hall as a lower-order Grisha.”

I clasp my hands behind my back to hide the way I clench them, but keep my face perfectly impassive. All this bullcrap ranking. Even when people can defy the laws of physics, they still just want to know who gets to sit higher up the table. And stupid ‘Some day my people will not be Grisha, they will only be Ravkan’ is the one who instituted it and perpetuates it. Yes, very egalitarian.

Marie’s face goes patchy in anger, and several other Summoners, young and old, step forward. I want to belittle her reaction, the humiliation her anger hides, but I can’t, not really. It’s human. “Need I remind you,” her stupidly perfect, bell-like voice cuts through the large space, “the Darkling is himself a Summoner?”

Sergei scoffs. “So you’re sayi--”

“Oh my God, would you two just shut up and make out already?” I bark. There is a smattering of sniggers, mostly from the mass of dark purple that has stayed out of the debate entirely, off away from the groups of crimson and midnight.  Everyone else looks at me like my head just turned to green gelatin. “If you’ll stop posturing," _dick-measuring,_  I really want to say, "for ten seconds, the question will answer itself,” I finish, annoyed. “Goddamned sharks,” I mutter under my breath.

On perfect cue, soft footsteps sound behind me, and I smile flatly at Sergei. The Darkling comes to a stop at my left side, putting me in the place of honor at his right. He turns to look down at me and asks, “Are you ready?” His voice is low and mild, and carries the utter calm of someone well used to command.

“Quite,” I say flatly, eyes forward.

As the Grisha orders form clean lines and take up their positions, I mutter quietly to him, “It’s disgusting how well-rested you look. Did you even sleep?”

He turns his head fractionally and I see a brow go up out of the corner of my eye. “Not as much as you, perhaps."

“Cute. That's cute. Because of course the way I look has nothing to to with the magical flesh-tailor you sent to my room," I say with syrup and acid.

His lips twitch.

No one has been gaping at me more than I should expect. There’s no incredulity or suspicion at my prediction coming to pass. What’s more likely: that I knew I'd be walking with the Darkling and that he was on his way, or that I know the future, and use that knowledge to make such grand predictions as when someone will enter a room? It’s the same reason Genya assumed a plausible reason for how I knew who she was and what she had shown up for. She probably assumes she can thank some catty servant for the mispronunciation of her name.

It’s satisfying, the knowledge that people will go out of their way to cover your mistakes. To see anything but what’s in front of them. Immensely so. Unfortunately, it’s also arrogant. People like to talk, and I’ve left too many pieces laying in the open already: “I believe you’ve been waiting for me,” the Fjerdan attack, the smattering of crumbs during _Jen_ ya’s arrival, and now this. All it will take is one conversation too many for someone to think something seems off. No one would jump immediately to the truth, but any suspicion is too much. I don’t count what I’d told Mal - he would die before he gave me up. On purpose, anyway.

As we move through the wooded tunnel that sequesters this world from the outside, I affix a placid expression on my face. It seems appropriate. I don't force the tension from my shoulders, though. A little "no one" Cartographer about to meet the King would hardly be at her leisure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fact Check: The human body taken as a whole is up to 60% water, says water.usgs.gov. Particular organs or systems may be more or less than that.
> 
> I told someone she told the Darkling to "Piss off." It was in reply to "You're not a morning person, are you?" But she was already very surly, and I felt like that would be a little overboard. Don't worry, there should be plenty of fun to be had as we go.
> 
> Because I'm as much of a completionist as I am, I bumped Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom up to the top of my reading list. I can pretty much promise there will be spoilers for them at some point. If that's a problem for you, let me know in the comments and we'll figure something out.
> 
> P.S. I'm convinced I will never quite grasp the proper, nuanced use of the word "irony."
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 10/11/17: Took out some ooc Darkling dialogue when/after he shows up for the procession  
> 8/2/18: Minor changes to dialogue to reflect better character understanding (mostly Genya and the Darkling)


	7. Gold

I'm braced for the absurd opulence of the Grand Palace, really I am. I'm braced for the massive, polished white marble steps veined with gold. I'm braced for the statuary, the crystal, the gold, the spaciousness. I'm aware that somewhere around me are probably things called crenelations and buttresses and oubliettes. Mostly, though, I'm carefully trying to forestall the worst of my judgement. It's not working as well as it should, and I can't tell if it's because it's really that difficult, or if I just don't actually want to do it.

And then we pass the gemstone tree. I had forgotten about the gemstone tree. Given that it's the size of a literal mature tree and made of exactly what you'd expect, I can’t help the way my eyes fasten to it as we pass. They go wide with surprise, then wonder, then tight with that judgement I can't get a lid on.

God help me, but the trunk looks to be made of diamonds cut through with a light purple stone. I realize with a jolt of electric disbelief that they seem to be color-changing alexandrite. The canopy of leaves is jade, and pale blue stones are nested like cherry blossoms throughout. The whole thing is held together with curling strands of gold. I may wonder much later how many oxen were required to get it into place.

I'm careful to keep my tension away from anywhere it will be readily noticed - my hands, my lips, my eyes, my jaw. When the tree is behind us, my attention to calm myself redoubles. I'm about to come face to face with a selfish, childish, amoral, egocentric, entitled, unrepentant rapist who rules by no merit other than the fault of birth. I wonder, if I let the Apparat play me like a puppet, how long it would be before I gain enough traction as a Saint to order his execution.

I'm keeping my eyes forward, but I assume the Darkling is seeing all of this. The tension in my neck, maybe. The dangerous light in my eyes. He watched me for almost two weeks on the road, but there wasn't much to see. Same activity, same scenery, same people. I don't think it's arrogance to expect he's watching me now.

I wish I could stop the procession, just for a moment. The best I can do is close my eyes and let the world shrink, reduce it to the in and out of my breath.

 

* * * * *

 

The throne room is almost comically large, moreso than what little I’ve seen of the rest of the palace. It’s as though the place was built for giants. Intricate geometric designs cut from different pieces of precious stone make up the floor. If those things hadn’t been enough to score another few points for my compensation theory, the dais ahead of us is marble, raised high, and the large thrones atop it are a shining gold, accented with cut gems. This place is like a parody. A how-to manual comical gaudiness. If I could assume the King's ancestors were anything like him, the state of the country suddenly makes sense. It is a shell, a hollow thing - all the effort and money has been poured into making it  _look_ powerful, instead of cultivating actual power that would speak for itself. It sings of youth and arrogance and a view of the world taken by short-sighted idiots.

The wide running carpet under our feet is palest blue with fat gold embroidery at its edges. One by one, the Grisha orders peel off to line our path, mostly protecting us from the view of gawking, whispering nobles. The women are in gowns with poofed little sleeves and plunging necklines, the men in gleaming white military dress. Each one wears so many medals, I imagine they’re not allowed aboard small watercraft for fear of sinking them.

The King is as disappointing and underwhelming as expected, and arrogance comes off of him like a cloud. He’s thin, though - for some reason, I had expected him to be fat. Structurally, he’s not especially attractive, but more than that is the look of someone who's enjoyed every indulgence and never had to work for a thing in his life. Weak. Soft. Overused.

He has been sitting up straighter as we neared, a light in his eyes like a child who’s about to be given candy before dinner. The instant his intent, shining gaze falls to me, it's a force of will to keep my feet moving, to not let them stutter. He’s dressed in what looks to be some sort of useless ceremonial armor, a thin little sword strapped to his side. I wonder how uncomfortable it is to sit with it twisting at your belt. There aren't exactly slats at the back of the throne to stick it through like there would be on a chair.

The second, slightly smaller throne is empty, and I patently ignore the pale-robed, darkly-bearded man standing between the two. But I can feel his eyes fastened on me like a goddamned shark. They have been since the doors opened, and if I didn’t know the specific nature of his interest, it is so obscene I would have sworn it to be decidedly adult. Just the thought of that makes my throat constrict and my mouth water like I’m about to be sick.

As we near the throne, I clasp my hands behind my back, denying the Darkling the chance to surreptitiously reach out and grip my arm to tell me to stop moving. He hasn’t told me that a demonstration will be expected, but neither does he need to ask if I’m ready for one - I did nothing but practice on the journey to Os Alta. I did so as privately as possible and only while it was bright enough outside that it wouldn't stand out. Which mostly just meant I'd had my back to everyone while I hunched over and summoned glowing things in my lap.

I am introduced - the _Sun Summoner_ is introduced - by the Darkling with great deference. There are excited titters. It’s fortunate that the King calls me forward immediately. Or rather, he orders the Darkling to bring me, as if I'm a gift being presented. His impatience is fortunate, because I have no intention of bowing to him, which would be an unfortunate foot to start on.

I keep my eyes are carefully off of the King. That way, at least there can be question about exactly what my perturbed look is regarding. Likely it will be assumed to be nerves. Or possibly extreme constipation.

I take a large breath and huff it quietly as I am examined like a broodmare at one of Vasily’s horse auctions. My tongue is between my back teeth so I can’t clench them.

“She’s very plain,” the King says, obviously disappointed. Pouting.

“She and her fellow soldiers haven't enjoyed the nutrition the court is blessed with, your Majesty,” I say clearly, looking up at him for the first time. The best that can be said of my expression is that it's not _openly_ hostile.

Hidden behind the overlap of our clothing, the Darkling reaches behind me and clamps down on my wrist.

The silence is tense. I ignore it as if oblivious, as if it is a known thing that royalty simply likes to take its time in conversation.

“Well, you'll certainly be eating better now," the King - whose name is Alexander, by the way, and must that not just stick in the Darkling's craw - says, voice turning jocular. Just like that, the substandard nutrition of his _entire fucking army_  is turned into an anecdote. Then his demeanor changes and he demands, “Show me.” Because yes, I've tricked the leader of the Second Army into believing I'm the Sun Summoner, but I won't trick you! I know that's not why he's demanding it. Or perhaps I'm simply trying to assume the best for some unintelligible reason.

The Darkling's words, unspoken in this world or time, pass through my mind. _The King is a child_.I realize that I am as close to genuinely hating him as I have been anyone in my whole life.

I'm not sad long, because a wicked and spectacularly foolish idea occurs to me, and adrenaline explodes like ice and fire under my skin, because it is _that advisable_.

I screw my face up in a perfect approximation of concentration and raise my hands, clearly straining. The Darkling turns to look at me. I scrunch my eyes closed. With a victorious little noise, half grunt and half shout, a white-hot, searingly bright light explodes into being like a sunburst. Right in the King’s face.

A second, much less flashy one, has gone off at the same time.

The court erupts into chaos. The Apparat takes hasty steps back, and someone catches a woman in pale green as she faints. Another in pink follows immediately. There is shouting. Servants are running.

Properly, I put on a show of unspeakable horror and shock, effusing apologies while my hands flutter to and away from my lips as if I can't remember what to do with them. I am the picture of contrite, fearful mortification.

I can do no more than flick my eyes to and away from the King, because if I look at him, my veneer will crack. He has shoved himself up from the throne, clearly blinded. His face is red from the heat, and his eyebrows and mustache have been burned away. An attendant is furiously patting out a smoking patch directly over his crotch that is doing its best to burst into flame. The fact that a hot light - so pale it can only be seen if you're looking for it - seems, mysteriously, to be clinging to the area likely does not help. The fabric seems to have been burned all the way through, in fact. An utter, unspeakable disaster, really. He probably won't be able to enjoy any time "in bed" until it heals, in fact. My lips are quivering behind my hands, and I am counting on my thick military jacket to hide the fluttering of my stomach muscles. It’s all I can do to keep the way my eyes are scrunched looking like mortification.

The Darkling ’s hands are clenched at his sides. That could signify a number of things. Amusement, for instance. Or fury. I'm not in a hurry to find out which - I am enjoying this far too much to have it ruined so quickly.

The King departs in a hurry to tend to himself, the poor footman trying to preserve the man's modesty with a jacket provided by one of the onlookers. He doesn't so much as glance my way. I'm not as worried as I probably should be. Who’s going to clap a Sun Summoner in irons for not having proper control over her newly-discovered powers? I let the light clinging to the King's "special place" fade, with an apology to it for what it has had to touch, and see the Darkling cast a look at me before he follows the bizarre procession out through a small door behind the thrones that’s made to look like part of the wall. 

I make an immediate exit of my own, and the disarray of the court spares me being mobbed by them. Even better is that it also saves me from my first meeting with the mouldy priest.

The moment I pass through the grand doors, I carefully relax my expression. Inside the room, all anyone should have seen is a horrified look, and outside, a slightly uncomfortable one. An appropriate face for a nobody soldier having just met the King. Genya is waiting for me in the hall at the far end of another small crowd of nobles, all of whom I ignore pointedly, even going so far as to sidestep one who tries to greet me. I pass by the Tailor without stopping, giving her a surreptitious wink and a little grin.

“Alina,” she says, “wait.” My eyes slip closed with a quiet sigh. I hadn't _really_ thought I'd get away with missing the Queen's meeting just because I tried to walk by Genya like I had somewhere to be, which of course she knows I don't. But I had  _hoped._   I turn back to her, wryly unamused. She’s giving me an odd look, which is understandable. For all she knows, I was just flirting with her. I wish I could be there when she finds out what happened.

“The Queen wants to meet you.” I mouth along with the words impatiently, not moving my lips. She ushers me down the corridor and into a smaller hallway. One that's human-sized.

“Couldn't she have saved us both time and trouble by being in the throne room?” I utter so only she can hear.

She gives me a look that I  _think_ is amused, but also a little like she's not sure what she's looking at. She steers me away from the main hall and out a narrow side corridor. “One of the perks of being Queen is that you can inconvenience anyone whenever you like.”

I hum appreciatively. “Maybe I should apply for the job.”

Her lips turn down in a quashed smile as she directs me through a door into a bright, gleaming room. There are five women seated in the space, aside from the queen, who I assume is the most jeweled and shining of all the jeweled, shining women. They appear dressed to match, all in spring colors. How adorable.

Mother Ravka is reclining like some Roman aristocrat on a divan of lavender-and-gold, color-shifting fabric. If none of that is enough to tell me who she is, there, on her lap, is the little snuffling dog. It looks like some sort of oatmeal-colored mutant with a perpetual head cold that shouldn’t be allowed, for its own sake, to exist. It wears a collar of cut, polished gemstones, none smaller than the nail of my pinky. I’m not sure of the economy here, but I’d hazard a guess that the accessory could feed an entire village for a year or five. But hey, who needs to feed their people when their dog can look fancy?

The concept Alina had lacked when trying to process the Queen's appearance is “plastic.” That’s what she looks like. Artificial. Over-done. Perfect to the point of mildly disturbing. My impression may be colored by the fact that I have a deplorable opinion of her, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think she's just a bitch.

Again, the Sun Summoner is introduced. This time, no name is offered.

I give the Queen the respect of looking her in the eye, but I make no move to bow. I can feel the pressure to do it, the expectation, like hands pushing down on my shoulders, more insistently with every moment.  
  
She cuts through the tension in the room like the well-trained Lady she is. “You are from a Grisha family?” she asks.

“One would assume so, somewhere down the line. But not immediately, no. Not that I know of.”

“That you know of?”

“I can be overly precise.”

“Hm. Are you are a peasant, then?”

I dip my chin fluidly.

When she says, “We are so lucky in our people,” I feel like I am hearing a line from a boring scene in a book I have read three dozen times. Her ladies agree, and I think one of them, the one who sits in the middle of the group of three to her left, is either a decent person, or the best actress in the room. “Your family must be notified of your new status. Genya will send a messenger.”

Genya gives another curtsy, the model of well-trained servility. It’s at once hilarious and nauseating.

Again I dip my chin. “Thank you, your Grace.”

I get a raised eyebrow for that, and I may kiss Genya for the work she's done on me, otherwise I would be blushing scarlet right now. Apparently 'Your Grace' is not an appropriate thing to call the Queen? That's what I gather, anyway. I'll have to get used to being thought of as odd - it’s the only way I'll be able to learn the details of this place. It’s not like there’s someone I can ask. Then again, what would the Darkling do if I just came out and told him everything? Something to put a good deal of thought into later. It would certainly be easier than the proverbial cloaks and daggers. I’m already exhausted, and all I’ve done is be introduced twice. Granted, to the rulers of the country, but all the same.

“How did you serve in the First Army?” Her phrasing is like the scream of rusted metal.

“I was a Cartographer.”

“You have a talent for drawing, then?” One of the women asks as if she's just discovered that someone she actually likes is at a drab party she's been forced to attend.

“So very brave, all that violence and hardship. How did you find it?" Another asks curiously.

It is a force of will not to say 'Violent and hard.' While it's true Starkov had been drafted like everyone else, no one has forced her to stay in the military for so long, so I can't fault the woman for that. What I say is, “...I found it underfunded, my Lady.” I will the hollows in my cheeks and the gauntness of my frame to stand out.

Again the Queen corrects our course. “This all must seem so very strange to you,” she muses. “Take care that life at court does not corrupt you the way it has others.” She doesn’t even try to conceal the fact that she’s talking about Genya. I detest words that degrade women, but at the moment, there is only one arching through my mind: _whore._ It is not, obviously, directed at Genya.

“I assure Your Highness,” I say with the false grace and gentility of a proper Lady, “I have only found myself in the very best and most exemplary of company so far, a true credit to your people. In fact I wonder if I might beg a favor. I would not ask, of course, but I am determined to do my best while here, and I believe Your Majesty may be able to help in a way no one else could.”

The Queen looks curious, with vitriolic amusement underneath. Most of her ladies faces’ could be better described as ‘I’m looking at a misshapen monkey and it is the most grotesquely arresting thing I have ever seen.’

“Of course,” the she-bitch says.

I gave her a meager, polite smile. “Most of my time will be spent training, but I hardly wish to embarrass myself further. I wonder if I may request a personal servant, someone well-versed in the ways of the court who might be able help me with unfamiliar clothing and customs. Someone who can help me in navigating the intricacies of the nobility for the times I will need to provide agreeable company.”

One of her ladies openly runs her eyes slowly down me, then back up, as if I am the most gutsy, audacious creature she can conceive of. The gossip that springs from this meeting may not be terribly helpful. But ah, well. Not like I can take it back now.

“A reasonable request, certainly,” the Queen allows smoothly. She is looking at me now as if I may be slightly more intelligent than a brick. “And a prudent one. The Little Palace has its own servants, however; the Darkling will accommodate your request.” Her tone is dismissive.

“I would ask him, of course, Your Majesty,” I say before she can excuse us properly. It is brazenly impudent, and the tension in the room becomes a living thing. “But there is someone in particular I would like, and she is in the service of the Grand Palace.”

She arches a disturbingly flawless brow, politely reigned ire replaced by mild curiosity.

I gesture delicately to Genya, and snickers behind hands are heard around the room. Genya looks at me in surprise.

“That girl is the Queen’s attendant,” one of the women says with obvious mirth.

Because the first thing anyone would think when they look at Genya Safin is "girl."

“And her presence would be sorely missed," the Queen adds, and not even an idiot could miss the cold undertone in her voice. The muscles in my neck tighten in anger. I swallow to hide it. “Go now,” she says with a flick of one hand. On it, I see the glint of perfect, rich green: the Lantsov emerald. I'm careful not to let my eyes stay on it too long.

I allow a nod before turning to leave, but no more. _Why would I start in the shallow end?_   I think wryly. The reality is, I just loathe her and her husband that much. I may be Alina, I may be in Ravka, but they are not my King and Queen. Nikolai, I would bow to. Begrudgingly, because his head would swell to the size of the throne room.

I blanch. Nikolai is going to ask me to marry him.  
  
“Do you have a death wish?” Genya asks the moment we are away from the Queen’s room, pulling me out of my stupor. She seems outraged - covering mortification, if I had to guess - and my appearance barely registers on her face. She's walking far too fast.

I open my mouth like a fish and a sound similar to a large rodent gnawing on a hard log comes out. I bring myself up short and clear my throat. “I’m sorry, did you _want_ to stay here? I suppose I can understand, I mean if you serve the Queen, and she's such an obvious delight.”

“It’s my job to be here! You had no right--”

“Sorry, then,” I say flatly. It had been a long shot. After everything she's been through, the chance that she would allow herself to be taken away now is nonexistent. But I had to try, at least once.

For her sake, for her pride and the fact that she is a grown-ass woman who has the right to make her own choices, I won't try again. I know the Darkling has offered to remove her from the Grand Palace. But he did it knowing full well she wouldn't accept, because he gave her something better to cling to than escape from abuse and rape: a greater purpose, and revenge. Maybe he even felt bad about putting her through it, at least a little. But he had given her to the Queen as a child knowing exactly what would happen to her in the end. An unfortunate but necessary sacrifice for the greater good. One he manipulated her into, instead of giving her a choice.

So every time,  _every time_ I look at Genya Saffin and know the hands that are put on her and the way the woman who is supposed protect her has turned on her because of it - because there was really anything Genya could to to stop the fucking  _King_  - it will be a reminder, forced and visceral, that the Darkling will,  _will_  do anything.

“I suppose if you want a break, you can always come spend time with me and my obviously bright and rosy temperament,” I deadpan.

She has nothing to say to that.

We walk in silence, my hands still clasped behind my back, and cross into the afternoon air and open sky. "I know the way back," I offer. "If you'd like to be done with me for the day. Which would be entirely understandable."

I see her give me an odd look out of the corner of my eyes, almost like she can't figure out what she's looking at, or like it's nothing at all she would have thought to expect.

When she doesn't peel away, I hide a little flutter of relief and ask, “Is it true a Grisha’s family is compensated when they’re taken?”

“Yes,” she says, her tone reserved and guessing.

“...Is that true for Grisha who are found as adults?”

“It’s very rare that it happens,” she says, “and it's hardly my decision to make. But given your circumstances, I wouldn't be surprised. The Darkling takes care of his people.”

Given the warm-up I've already had today, it's not even difficult to hide my anger first at the lie, then at the reason she's giving it.

We enter the forest "gate" - the tunnel from one world to another, better one. Well, better if I ignore the terrifying immortal who runs the place. The lacework the branches make of the light on the ground is arresting.

“I don't suppose I could give someone the information and they could just ask the Darkling for me?” I say hopefully.

"He's not that bad, you know." She sounds almost wry. "Really."

"Oh," I say lightly, careful to keep any drop of emotion out of my voice, "I know."  _Far better than you._  
  
She shrugs. “You can just give it to me, if you'd like.”

"And you can ask the next time you have tea with him?" I say facetiously.

She stiffens subtly, and my skin flushes. "I didn't mean it like that," I correct too quickly. "I mean, I didn't mean... I joked because I  _don't_ think it's unusual that you'd see him."

Her tension cracks, just a bit. I'd forgotten what thick skin she's had to develop over the issue, especially around Grisha. "I'm a servant, Alina, and not even at the Little Palace. Why would I ever see him?"

I shrug. "You wear their colors. That doesn't make you one of them. A Grisha is a Grisha, and I'm given to understand the Darkling is rather protective of those. I also think it's a fair guess that you didn't end up in the Queen's service on accident. You're stationed there and you work for her, yes." I glance over at her long enough to add, "That doesn't make you one of hers."

She opens her mouth and breathes in as if to say something, hesitates, the asks as if bewildered, "You were a Cartographer?"

"An unambitious Cartographer," I reply casually.

We're halfway across the massive grounds before either of us speaks again. It feels like a thoughtful silence.

"You do realize the Queen could have had you in irons for the way you spoke to her," Genya says.

"Of course I do," I say brightly. Then I lean in and say in a conspiratorial tone, "That was what made it so fun."

"Alina," she says, a little unease in her voice, "I know we just met, but you need to be careful.”

I snort. “Genya, I'm a Grisha of legend come to life a matter of days ago, a peasant nobody thrown to the center of world politics and warfare, and I'm expected to single-handedly save the entire nation. If I took stock of every new thing I needed to treat with delicacy and tact, I'd lose my mind."

"...Somehow I doubt that."

"It was my first time in there. I figured I'd get the fun out of the way while I still could. I won't have being foreign to the environment as an excuse for inexcusable behavior after I've been here a while. Especially not after a performance like that."

"Good. Because you can't do anything from a dungeon."

"Not true! I could weave strands of my hair together and use chicken bones to take up knitting. Or I could teach the rats to play fetch. I'm very fond of animals. Besides, no one is going to lock the Sun Summoner in a dungeon. I'd get a guarded tower at the very least. Honestly I could have done much worse in there," I not toward the Grand Palace at our backs, "and all I would have gotten is a slap on the wrist." I pause, an agitated huff coming out of me despite myself. "I understand what you're saying though. And I appreciate it. I don't intend to tempt fate  _too_ overtly, don't worry. I just... God I _hate_ those two with the fire of a thousand suns. Pun intended."

For a long time she just looks at me, then turns her head away.

I hadn't been certain what I'd make of her. She's a good person, dedicated and loyal, incredibly clever; I thought I’d be just as angry at her as I have been at the Darkling, that she was as implicit in his deception as he was. But that isn't true, not really. Genya doesn’t know everything. What she’s done with the information he’s shared, what she allows herself to go through for the sake of a better future....

Aleksander Morozova has a lot to answer for. The fact that he knows it earns him no points, only more disdain.

Being faced with Genya, with her energy and the feel of her, even knowing what she's hiding, is different than theory. As long as I assume she's going to report every single thing I say and do to the Darkling, I don't mind her company. Alina was right: Genya is someone, maybe the only person who will tell me where to cram it if it needs saying. She won't care if I technically outrank her, even if that rank ends up being utterly hollow. Her willingness to do that is going to be invaluable in the coming months, and in that way, she may feel like the only real person I have around me. A sick chill passes over me at the realization of how much I'm going to need that. How alone I'm going to be.

"You're going to make someone faint with your language, by the way."

"Are you telling me that so I can make sure you're there to watch? Do you have any sworn enemies? I could make them my first target. I can be very... linguistically creative. And tenacious."

She laughs, and it's what I imagine the gentlest stars would sound like if they could be heard.

"You may be, _may_ be, mind, just the right amount of mad."

"Is that your way of politely remarking that I must have been dropped on my head as a child? Because if it is, it's probably one of the more delicate deliveries I'll hear over the next several weeks. The Darkling may literally flay me the next time I see him, in fact.”

“Why?”

A grin moulds my face and I give a throaty chuckle. “Much more fun if you have to find out yourself. Though I would really love to see your face when you do.”

  

* * * * *

 

"Those women in the Queen's sitting room," I muse. "Do they always dress with that much... enthusiasm? Or do they just do it when you're going to be around? You know, like how men buy themselves expensive things to try to look better than one another. Or like the philosophy behind the construction of that monstrosity they call a palace.”

"Oh, no, they're like that all the time." I wonder if the little bite I see in her eyes is the memory of how the Queen used to dote on her so much that she was dressed that way, too. "It's horrifying. You saw their faces and hair? Overdone and just...." She makes a sour face. Even it is disgustingly flattering.

I lower my voice. "The Queen looked like some creepy doll. Like she was going for otherworldly perfection but overshot the mark by about three leagues. I'm guessing she doesn't tend to be smart enough to listen to your advice on the subject?" Ha. 'Guessing.'

"Saints, no, not for years. If she would let me do what I wanted, she would actually look beautiful. Well... maybe not if I did what I  _really_ wanteded." She grins over at me conspiratorially. If she's willing to try joking like this already then I have, incomprehensibly, done something right this afternoon.

"I would pay good money to see that." If I had any money, that is.

"I could be persuaded to work on you, if you'd like," she offers with transparently false lightness. As if she isn't itching to do it. As if she doesn't love a project, love making a thing the best version of itself. "Provided you have taste."

I hum thoughtfully. "I'd probably just let you do whatever you wanted. But only if I'm absolutely positive I haven't done anything to make you cross lately." I smile a little. "In all honesty, it might not be a bad idea. You saw me when I woke up today. I’ve looked like that my whole life, and my best friend looked like one of you. Generally speaking, I don’t care what a person looks like,” I say, “I care who they are.” A crease forms between my brows, remembering the other Grisha where they gathered in the hall. "But I don't know if that gets to be my world anymore. Grisha grow up among Grisha. I can't imagine what they make of the rest of the world, and here I am, a legend, and I look like I'm five minutes from death. There are a lot of armors a person can wear in a place like this, and if you use it properly, I know beauty can be one of the best."

"You almost sound like you speak from experience."

I inhale expansively and smile at her. "In another life, maybe. People are just predictable. Those with rank or certain stock like to pretend they're different from those who are down in the mud every day. They're not. Not in any way that counts. I imagine the Darkling will keep me cloistered and sequestered as long as he can, and I'm not exactly here to make friends - especially not with a bunch of glorified, pampered adolescents - but the world outside this place he's built is going to find me sooner or later. I'd rather not be caught off guard." I pause thoughtfully, and a wicked grin spreads over my face. "Then again, taunting them with the veneer of a woman at death's door could be fun, too."

She looks at me a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is quieted, a little smile in the shape of the sound, but there's something I can't quite identify there, too. I can't tell if it's sadness or wariness. "I can see why he likes you."

I look at her with brows raised. "Can you be more specific? As you've seen so far, I'm really very charming."

“When you’re not being woken from a nap?”

“No one is charming when they're being woken from a nap. If they are, I would question whether they were human." My voice changes to a hair more serious. "My favorite apprentice used to stand well out of arm's’ reach if he had to do it. If he'd been smart, he would have just poked me with a long stick from behind a sturdy wall. Maybe through a window."

"I'll warn the servants."

"You are a woman of great compassion, truly."

Some of the warmth and crackle of her smile drains away, so little that no one else would have realized. "I was talking about the Darkling."

I balk, and my feet root in place. “Good God, what? Why would you...? No, Genya," I stammer. "Just... no.”

She cants her head. "Honestly? I think you remind me of him. Just a little."

I stare, horrified. "Well," I reply, off-balance, "I can see why. Personally I was so in awe of his good humor I wasn't sure what to do with myself. He was right up there with Ivan."

She laughs again, but sobers quickly. "He carries a lot on his shoulders. The Darkling, I mean. More than most people know."

"...Don't we all," I say, quiet and serious.

She smiles, but it is only polite. I would probably react the same way in her place. After all, I couldn't possibly have any idea.

 

* * * * *

 

The Darkling catches up with us as we near the large doors to the Little Palace and excuses his guards. I've held no illusion that I would escape running into him just because he didn’t catch us at the Grand Palace. Flimsy, delightful hope, yes, but that has been the bulk of it. Besides, best get this over with now so I can't worry about it in my spare time.

Infuriatingly, he chooses to walk next to me. Half an inch closer than I think appropriate for someone you don't know. In the language of physical cues, half an inch here might as well be three miles. If I had quills, they would be raised in warning.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself," he says. His tone is impossible to read, and it leaves me patently concerned. Then annoyed that I'm so easily played.

"I really did," I remark sincerely.

Genya looks over curiously.  
  
“How was your meeting with the queen?” he asks. "Any second degree burns?"

I look over at him, narrowing my eyes a little. "Is that your way of saying, 'Never do anything that stupid again?'" My impression of his deep voice is comical at best. "'If you don't learn to behave yourself someone's going to lock you in a dungeon?' 'That was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my horrifyingly long life?'"

"It doesn't seem I need to say any of that, does it?"

I look at him a moment, unsettled. "...You're screwing with me, aren't you? You _have_ a reaction, but you don't want me to know what it is. Pick your battles? Keep them guessing?"

His lips twitch in what I can only interpret as some sort of genuine amusement. "I've found a certain value in keeping my thoughts to myself."

"Oh, nice. That's nice. Want to try to be a little  _less_ pointed next time?"

Genya is wearing a sort of refined, perfected look that would be called horror on an actual human.

"You didn't answer my question," he says. He still hasn't looked at me.

"Sorry, I thought misdirection and roundhouse questioning was what constituted manners around here. It was lovely, thank you," I say with acid sarcasm, "though the only burns were of the verbal kind." Then, tone going more serious, I blandly say, "It was about what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

I cast my eyes around to make sure no one is near us and lower my voice. “Someone suited to her husband.”

I feel the Darkling glance at Genya after a moment.

“If someone wants to warn me next time," I go on, "I can do the kind thing and stab myself in the foot to get out of it.”

 

* * * * *

 

"The other Grisha who came here with us, have they left yet?" I ask.  
  
"No. They go back out tomorrow," the Darkling says.

"Early, or...?"

His look asks the question for him. 

"Fedyor," I explain. "I was hoping to talk to him before he leaves."

"I'll see to it," is all he says.

I manage to make my mulish "Thanks" sincere. Just barely.

 

* * * * *

 

The Darkling sends us on our way and then, after pausing for what I can only assume is dramatic effect, declares from behind us, “Genya, the kefta will be black.”

The Tailor loses her shit, so to speak, and I turn around and calmly counter with, “Gold.”

He looks at me long enough that it would test a normal person's resolve, then cants his head ever so slightly. "Why?"

“Because I'm not you," I say simply. "I appreciate what it means, you putting me in your color. I know I'd be the first to wear it besides your line. But I'm not a Darkling. I'm not a variation of you. And I don't want to be," I say, gentling my tone enough so he knows it's meant as a distinction, not an insult. "I don't want black with a little gold around the sleeves and collar as an afterthought. I want...." I cast my eyes around, looking for the right word. "Balance.” Only after it's out of my mouth do I realize what I've just said, what I've parroted. But if he hasn't put the feeling, the intention, to those words, I might be safe. I doubt he's spoken of it even to Baghra. Maybe to some mortal along the way, someone who would take it to the earth, but not to anyone who could carry it through time. Besides, whatever it is I'm going to end up planning to do here, keeping myself on his decent side without falling totally into his shadow is about the best middleground I can hope for.

I really should add something deferential. _If it's alright with you_ , something like that. I don't. Playing small to this man would have its advantages. But there's another side of him I want to see, and I'm going to have to prod it out with hot pokers.

He doesn't react to what I've said. At all. It's disconcerting and intimidating as hell, just like he wants it to be. Maybe he wants to see how much I want what I'm asking for. If I'm willing to stand up to him for it. Maybe he wants to see how fast I'll cave in general. Probably it's none of those things, but something I don't think to guess. I wonder what it must be like to hold yourself so emotionally oppressed for so long. I'd bet part of him believes he doesn't even have emotions anymore, not really. He doesn't show himself to anyone. As far as I know, he hasn't, not for hundreds of years before Alina's earliest traceable ancestors were digging around in the soil. Not even his mother. I'd wonder if he was a sociopath, maybe even a psychopath, if not for... actually, I do wonder that. But I'm fairly certain that's not what I'm dealing with; psychology doesn't account for immortality when it classifies aberrant behavior, and this man absolutely feels things.

He inhales, and his pale eyes swing to Genya. He gives her a little nod, then leaves.

I get the tirade the moment we're out of earshot. “Are you out of your _mind?”_ She whisper-yells.

“Likely,” I say. “I suppose we’ll find out. Not like I can hide in the documents tent anymore. The world wants me to be something, Genya. He," I nod my head behind us, "obviously wants me to be something. If that something is going to look like anything worthwhile, if it's going to be anything other than me getting swallowed up whole and used toward someone else's ends, it has to come from me. So why not find out what it looks like sooner rather than later? I don't like wasting time." Meek won't get the Shadow Fold closed. Technically neither will I, but that isn't the point.

When she has seen me back to my palatial rooms and the tailor - the one for clothing - has come and gone, I ask a servant to bring me food - twice the normal portions. I jot down the information so my "compensation" can be sent to the appropriate places. Luckily, a quill is more or less intuitive, and only takes a light hand.

I give Genya a warm goodbye, but I don't ask her to eat with me. I like her. I do. But the only side she's on is that of the Darkling's revolution, and unlike Alina, I don't really do "lonely." I have no doubt she could prove something of a friend, but have no need or desire to rush into anything.

 

* * * * *

 

"What are your impressions?" the Darkling asks, smooth water through a creekbed.

"...I don't hate her," Ivan says, begrudging and like he's surprised by his own assessment. It's as close as he would come to saying he actually liked her. He's seated right adjacent to the Darkling at the long, dark table in his private chambers. Genya is at his left. Ivan had given her a subtle but dirty look when she'd sat there. It wasn't that she had done anything wrong. He simply guarded the Darkling's confidence that jealously.

She gives him a dubious look now.

The big man shrugs a shoulder. "She has problems, that's obvious. But she's not an idiot, she's tough, and she seems willing to work. She has a knack for looking at things the way they are, too, instead of the way she might want them to be."

"You don't like anyone," Genya points out.

"I didn't say I liked her."

The exquisite woman just rolls her eyes.

"She's too...."

"Flippant?" Genya suggests.

"There's that, yes. But that isn't what I was going to say. She adapts too fast. It's almost unsettling."

"Like she's done everything before," Genya says quietly.

"Yes. She got pieces ripped off of her back by a volcra, right shoulder all the way down to her left hip. I can only assume none of us noticed because there was so much blood, period, and she must have been in shock, because she didn't let on. She didn't even cringe when she settled in the coach, but then she said she was going to take a nap and passed out from blood loss instead. When she woke up and we realized what was happening, Fedyor had to take pieces of her back out to get her clothes off, they'd dried in so deep. We couldn't put her to sleep until after the worst of it was done. She's been in a Cartography tent her whole career? But she didn't scream. She sees through people. She was obviously in pain most of the journey. We couldn't feed her nearly enough, but she didn't complain, not once. And whether it was the Fjerdan attack or finding out her whole back would be permanently scarred, she just... it wasn't that she didn't care. It was that she didn't care _enough._  It reminded me of Kuznetsov," he says to the Darkling.

"Kuznetsov?" Genya asks.

"He came to us older than Starkov," Ivan explains, "probably around forty. He never spent much time at the palace. But he had that distance to him, to, almost exactly like her. Not as obnoxious, though. He kept to himself, didn't smile, didn't laugh, never seemed afraid, just did what he was told. After a while, we figured out he just wasn't feeling anything. He hadn't had an easy life before we found him, and to deal with it, he'd shut down. Stopped feeling, didn't care about anything. Starkov has a temper, she's obviously affected by things, but she's just too calm."

"She has a mouth on her," Genya says, dry.

Ivan laughs derisively. “You noticed that, too?”

“Yes, I did,” she says flatly. “In front of the Queen, unfortunately." If either of them knew the Darkling better, they might have understood the reason for the tiniest of twitches in his jaw muscles. He is holding back a smile.

"If given half the chance," she continues, "she's going to get herself killed. The only sign of respect she would give was a small nod.

The Darkling's look turns thoughtful, perhaps concerned. At the very least, speculative.

"You heard what she did when she met the King, right?" Ivan asks Genya. "There's no way it was an accident. All she did the whole way here was work with her powers, and she caught on quick. She's got balls, I'll give her that."

Genya shakes her head in answer to Ivan's question, so he shares the story. 

"I wish I'd seen it," he finishes with a dark, unkind smile.

"Saints," Genya breathes. "She _is_ going to get herself killed." Idly, she reaches into her sleeve and pulls out Alina's note, folded neatly. "She gave me this tonight," she says, setting it before the Darkling. "It's where she wants her compensation sent. The Queen told her about it, more or less."

The Darkling unfolds the tiny sheaf and glances down at it, then back up at Genya with a raised brow.

"I was surprised, too," she said. "When I asked her who he was, she just shrugged and said 'A brother, more or less.' She wants half sent to each."

"Did she have anything to say about this 'brother?'"

She shakes her head, silken hair shifting gracefully. "I assumed you or Ivan would send for information on him, and I didn't feel like I knew her well enough to push. She's not forthcoming. Not at all. And...." She pauses, looking a little uneasy. "She's hard to read."

The look on Ivan's face makes it clear he thinks that's preposterous. But then the Darkling says, "I noticed that, too." He doesn't sound concerned, nor does he acknowledge the looks of surprise or unease on the others' faces. He hands the slip of paper to Ivan and tells the man to see to it.

When Ivan reads the information, he looks up, wearing surprise. "Keramzin? She's an orphan?"

"Apparently," the Darkling says.

In answer to Ivan's disbelief about Alina's opacity, Genya says to him, "A first impression of her is easy enough. She hits you hard and loud up front, like you said. And frankly she seems like...."

The Darkling says, "Speak freely, Genya."

She glances at him, then goes on, "She seems like a bitch. But when you get any kind of look past that, she's a completely different person, and today left me with too many questions to feel like I know much of anything about her, which to be honest is unsettling. She treated me well, like I wasn't a servant."

"You aren't," the Darkling says.

Genya swallows, then nods and goes on. "But when Sergei came forward in the Hall and put his hand on her arm to try to 'introduce her around,' she looked down at it like she was going to cut it off. She obviously doesn't care if she embarrasses herself, or anyone else for that matter. She clearly hates the King and Queen--"

"Good taste," Ivan says, a note of bitter anger in his voice.

"Yes, I thought so, too," Genya agrees. "But she doesn't seem to feel that way about you," she says to the Darkling, "so it isn't just that she hates rank or authority." She shakes her head. "I would say she has no sense of self-preservation, but I can't because she's aware of the danger she put herself in. I would say that makes her a fool, but I can't say that either because she has some of the sharpest skills of observation I've ever seen, and she thinks well on her feet. None of the easy conclusions fit her if you bother to look. She told me she acted the way she did in the Grand Palace because no one was going to lock up the Sun Summoner when she'd just arrived. But there's a line, and if she didn't cross it today, she came dangerously close. 

"She was shy _and_  unabashed when I first went into her room, and she apologized when she thought she'd hurt my feelings. She was curt and dry, but if she thought I was upset, she was quick to smooth it over or reassure me. And yet she showed no hesitation to disagree with me, either, as if she needed my approval. I think she's... kind," she concludes as if baffled by her own observation. To the Darkling, she adds, "I wouldn't have thought it was possible for anyone to speak to you the way she did today if I hadn't seen it for myself. I still hardly believe it. Maybe she's delirious from the road."

"No, she was the same way on the journey, and I saw the same thing you did. It was obvious she was aware who she was talking to. She just seemed to choose not to care. Or at least to act that way."

For a moment, everyone is quiet, sifting through their own thoughts.

"I spoke to Yelena," Genya says. "She said when she took Alina to her room, she went in as easily as if she'd been raised in a palace, even given how tired she was. As if the richness and space were nothing. And when she ordered a bath drawn, it was the same. No hesitation, no embarrassment. Like she'd she'd been giving commands all her life."

The Darkling's eyes slipped to the side, thoughtful.

"So she's a snob?" Ivan concludes, voice darkening. "She had an easy enough time writing up this note, I take it? And she asked for you like you were a dress she wanted. Is she greedy? Entitled?"

"No," Genya answers without hesitation. "It wasn't like that, and that's just it. I didn't see anything of arrogance in her, not once. Neither did Yelena. So far, Alina is a walking contradiction. If I had to make a guess now, I'd say she's afraid, and she's been very, very badly hurt in the past, probably more than once. I'd say she's a good person who has been given reason to mistrust authority, even hate it, and she's used to the knowledge that she has to fend for herself, or no one else will. That, and I would bet almost anything that she'd be the first to stand up for a person who needed any real kind of help. But I can't say any of those things, because so far, nothing about her is universally true. She kept dropping surprises.

"If finding herself face-to-face with you," she glances at the Darkling, "being taken away from literally everything she's ever known without so much as a chance to say goodbye, surviving a bad volcra attack, having her life threatened by three dozen druskelle, and being shoved in front of the King and Queen in one afternoon doesn't genuinely scare her, or at least throw her off balance or so much as intimidate her - and it absolutely didn't - then she's just...." Her eyes slip away, remembering again how brazen the woman had been with the Darkling. Utterly unafraid. Even people who looked at him with lust were smart enough to understand how dangerous he was.

"Kuznetsov," Ivan repeats. "It's the logical explanation. She definitely feels things--"

"What makes you say that?" The Darkling asks. He clearly doesn't disagree, but he does this to Ivan sometimes, asks him to explain his thinking. Ivan considers it an honor every time.

"She has a fuse. It's long, but when it burns down, it's going to be something to see. There were small things, too, in the carriage. She didn't want Fedyor to think she was complaining about not having enough to eat. She was grateful to Lobov for letting her crush his hand when we were seeing to her back. Strong for such a withered little thing, too." His hand flexes a little, remembering the feel. "She seems... I don't want to use the word 'nice,' because she's definitely not that.

"She cares about people," Genya says.

"She seems to, to a point. She just doesn't seem to want anything to do with most of them." He glances at the Darkling, who indicates he should go on. "She has to be in shock after Kribursk and the trip here. I say give it some time, because something is bound to break through, sooner rather than later. She was a Cartographer. She's probably never even seen a man killed." A troubled look crosses his face, and he looks at the Darkling. "Do you believe it, Soverenyi? About the Cut?"

"I interviewed Grisha and First Army soldiers who were on the skiffs that morning. It was the Cut, there's no question."

A ripple of unease goes through the two younger people in the room. "How?" Genya asks. "It isn't possible."

"Neither is she," the Darkling replies. "Sometimes all it come down to is that when it's time for something, it's time. The otkazat'sya who saw the Cut didn't know what it was, and it will mix in with the dozen new rumors that crop up every day about that crossing. The Grisha have been ordered to keep quiet, and we are the only three here who will hear anything about it for now. We'll see what else she can do before making the target on her bigger than it already is.

"What else?"  
  
"She knows how the King is with servants," Genya says. Her eyes go down to the surface of the table, polished but not shining, not mirror-smooth, as she remembers. "I have a suspicion that's why she asked the Queen for me, but that wouldn't make any sense. I'm one random servant. I asked her about it afterward, but she just brushed it off and changed the subject."

"Did she take an interest in you?" the Darkling asks Genya.

"I think so. But honestly? I'm not sure. If you compare how she was with me to how she was with the other Grisha, she loved me. She joked with me, she said...." She looks down for a moment, pushing down an uncomfortable swell of emotion. "She said that what I wear doesn't make me a servant. That the fact that I take orders from the Queen doesn't make me hers, and that no matter where I work, I'm Grisha. She said she thought you were protective of us, no matter where we are, but I don't think she included herself in that." She pauses. "The thing is, I didn't show her anything that could have led her to think I'd need to hear any of that."

She lightens her voice, eager to move on. "I thought she might be flirting with me once; she winked at me when she came out of the throne room. But I suppose now I know what that was about."

The Darkling is looking at Genya, and she is glancing at the table again, pretending not to notice. 

Finally, he says, "Her sentiment on the King and Queen works to our advantage for now. She just needs to be kept away from anyone important until we find out if she has any hold at all on her temper. Before I left Kribursk, I was warned about it by her commanding officer, but he didn't mention anything about a problem with insubordination. Or ambition," he adds, almost wry. Almost. "Do what you can to get close to her, and keep her away from court until she's tested."

Then a smile, a tiny thing by normal standards but one of the largest either Grisha has seen on him, works its way to his lips. "At the very least, until his majesty can recover."

Then the Darkling looks to Genya. "You know what to do with the kefta?" Ivan does a poor job of concealing the way he stiffens, but he does try. The Darkling isn't worried. His Second will adjust, in time.

She nods. "I have an idea I think should be perfect. I'm going down to the workrooms as soon as we're done here. Niamh and Mundjerd are waiting to help."

"I'll leave it to you," he says, dismissing her. "Ivan. Have Fedyor find her before he leaves in the morning. She wants a word with him."

The big man rises, clasps a fist over his heart, and says, "Soverenyi," before leaving behind Genya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is so fun it's not even fair.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 10/31/17: Had cause to re-read this chapter and oh my damn. Quality of life edits happened. I know it still needs work, but it shouldn't be downright painful now. Many tweaks (mostly additions) to the meeting at the end.  
> 8/2/18: Changes based on better understanding of characters. Mostly Genya and the Darkling. Last scene more or less overhauled. Needs another read-through or two.


	8. F*ck The World

At some ungodly hour - the sky is a sickening shade of not-quite-midnight blue that indicates predawn - I’m woken by knocking at my door. I have a vague memory that it began at a polite, quiet volume, and has steadily grown louder and more insistent.

I sleep naked. For propriety, I tried not to, I really did, but all that had accomplished was making me toss around all bound up in entirely too much cloth until I had shucked off what I was wearing and thrown it in an indeterminate direction with as much spite as I could.

It takes considerable strength now to yank the bedspread off the top of my mattress - the servants don’t mess around when they make a bed, apparently - and wrap it securely under my armpits. I trip over it as I stumble my way toward whoever I am about to kill with nothing more than pluck and broiling hatred.

I jerk the door open, hair so disheveled and eyes so bleary and unamused that I probably look more like some sort of deranged pelican than a woman, and glower until I make out pale hair and a long face.

“Fedyor?” I croak. I sound like an asthmatic, chain-smoking 70 year-old.

“Ah... you wanted to talk to me?”

“At a  _reasonable_  hour, yes. Does no one here sleep?”

“I’m leaving for the front soon, or I would have waited.”

“...Oh. Um... can I...” I stammer eloquently for a moment before managing to convey that I would like to put actual human clothes on. I have no idea if it’s considered scandalous for a woman to be seen in her nightclothes, so after stumbling into them, I cover myself in a thick robe and join him in the hall with a yawn so wide my jaw pops.

“I wanted to ask if you’d like to stay,” I manage.

He raises his brows politely.

“I know you want to help people, so I don’t know if asking this is insulting, but I figured better to extend the offer just in case.” I’m coming awake for all outward appearances and trying desperately to get my brain to catch up. “The Darkling is putting me in black,” he gives an appropriately flabbergasted reaction, “and so I figure a bodyguard or whatever might not be the worst idea. So... do you want to stay?”

He gets a mildly uncomfortable look, and I know immediately what I’ve done wrong.

“Uh, Fedyor, up until like. . .” I glance over my shoulder at the spitefully-lightening sky, “I don’t know, twelve-ish hours ago? I was pretty much a no one. I’m not the type to hold a grudge over stupid shit; I am genuinely asking what you  _want_  to do. It’s your life, man. I’m pretty sure if me having a guard was a matter of national security, you would have had to get past some surly, unamused guy in gray to knock at my door.”

He smiles, and the piece that is sheepish or relieved is only an undertone. “Corporalki choose which path to follow once they pass a certain stage in their training, you know. Healer or Heartrender. I  _did_  always want to help people, so the choice was a hard one for me. I wanted to be a Healer, but in the end, I thought I could do more good on the front. I’m honored you would ask, really I am, but... if you want me to be honest?”

I nod, encouraging him to go on.

“I don’t like killing, Alina. But I still think I can do more good for Ravka out there than I could here.” His words are sincere, if apologetic.

I huff a rueful little laugh. “Well all that stuff I said about wanting you to be honest? I lied. I’m gravely insulted.” His expression stutters. “I demand reparations. So if you’ll kindly show me to the library, we can consider this blood feud of ours ended once and for all.”

His amusement then is almost fond. “Of course.” He extends an ushering hand in a gentlemanly fashion - after the way Sergei just grabbed at me, it's that much easier to appreciate his manners - and we walk together down the staircase whose length I am fairly certain is designed for the sole purpose of spite. As it turns out, the library is through the only other door on “my” side of the great hall, or main hall, or whatever the hell it’s called.

I have the odd urge to hug Fedyor goodbye. I don’t, of course. But I want to. If he dies, I'm going to be seriously pissed.

 

* * * * *

 

I’m certain I’ll hate myself for it later, but I don’t go back to bed. I pick out a few books on Grisha theory that look interesting, then head back to my room to fret needlessly over the day to come under the pretense of browsing said books. Only to give up the eighth or so time my head sags and go back to sleep.

 

* * * * *

 

A servant wakes me when the sky is a much more reasonable color of blue. At least I assume it’s a servant until Genya lets herself in.

“By all means,” I mutter into my pillow, “come right in. My gloriously appointed suite is your gloriously appointed suite.”

“I can’t understand you when your face is buried in feathers, Alina. Now get up, you silly girl. Come look at your kefta. They just finished it.”

I make a wholly unladylike sound as I push myself off the bed - it’s more of a roll, really, one that almost has me landing in a heap on the floor. “I trust they’re sent appropriately lavish thank-you gifts when forced to pull all-nighters?”

“What on earth did you do to your bed?” She asks in reply, eyeing the rumpled comforter sprawled half on the floor as she sets what looks like an unreasonably large stack of clothing on my vanity.

“Oh, I had my first torrid affair in the small hours of the morning. A soldier leaving for the front. I shall remember him fondly.”

“You have a very odd sense of humor.”

“The least odd thing about me, really. Os Alta has no idea what it’s in for.”

“I’ve only met you, and I actually believe that. Now come here, look. I’m quite proud of it.”

 _”You_  made it?” I ask in surprise, shuffling over to her as she hangs the garment up on the star-speckled changing screen. “I thought you just flesh-tailored--" I catch sight of the garment my words cut off. "...Holy shit, Genya,” I breathe, eyes going wide.

“I know,” she purrs. “I didn’t make it, of course. I couldn't sew to save my life. But I did most of the design work.”

“Whatever they’re paying you, it’s not enough.”

The kefta is exactly what I’d asked for: balance. The whole thing is a graceful, flawless mix of gleaming, pale gold, and the Darkling’s black, each color woven into and through the other. The bottom is dense in gold, scaling up and starting to give way completely to sable around the hips, leaving the chest and shoulders and neck almost entirely black. It’s clever; his color on the top is what people will see first and consider dominant - my rank,  _his_  rank and status - and claim - but the gold is unmistakably there. It isn’t the Darkling’s kefta, and it isn’t the gold of a Sun Summoner that Nikolai had (would?) put Alina in. This is something entirely new. Something mine. I feel an odd sense of dissonance looking at it, as if my being here is suddenly and unequivocally becoming real.

I have never seen anything so beautiful, or so terrifying.

“Shoo,” Genya says. “Go wash up, I don’t want you touching this thing with dirty hands.”

I eyeball her. “You get comfortable awfully fast, woman. And you are aware that I’ll be doing physical training in this? There will be many incidences of me getting knocked on my ass and or face in the dirt and or mud.”

She grins. “I know. It’s dirt-resistant, that's part of what the Fabrikators do." Because of course, God forbid a soldier should be protected from bullets when there's risk of a Grisha getting  _dirty._  "You could crawl the length of the grounds and it would come out cleaner than you. You’ll have more delivered, of course, but this one will do for now, and I've brought plenty of underclothes.

I look consternated. "If I'd known that, I would have asked for white. Much better contrast to black. Better fit, too. You know, poetically."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, this is infinitely better than white would have been. Come on, wash up and get dressed. I’ll do your hair.”

“The very soul of generosity. Won't your lady harpy miss you, though? I don't want you getting in trouble on my account.”  _You have it hard enough over there as it is._

"No, unless it's time for a touch-up or there's an event or meeting, she doesn't really have any work for me. I get to more or less do what I want most of the time. She wouldn't wake up before noon if the palace was burning down around her ears anyway, the cow."

"That honesty, Genya," I say appreciatively. "I have such a girlcrush on you right now. Hey, if this thing is dirt resistant, why is it I have to wash my already clean hands?"

"It's more your face that needs it," she says, leaning over my vanity to peer at a nonexistent something on the skin near her eye. "Besides," she looks over at me seriously, "you're the first Grisha in history allowed to wear the Darkling's color." She glances over at what I can only refer to as "the gown," because I'll be Goddamned if that thing is day wear, where it hangs on the changing screen, ominous as a bloody sunrise. "It deserves the respect.

I remind myself what the protection of status would mean to Genya and do as I'm told without complaint. If any part of her can live vicariously through this, it is literally the least I can do to humor her.

 

* * * * *

 

When I step out from behind the screen, Genya is still Genya, but there's something subtly different in her eyes.  
  
...Ah.  
  
"Genya," I say conversationally as I look myself over and smooth my hands down my front, "if you start treating me differently behind closed doors because of a color, I will find your room and cut your hair off while you sleep."  
  
She gives a quiet little huff and murmurs, "Understood. Now come over here so I can get started. Honestly, looking at your hair, I almost do believe you got tumbled last night."

 

* * * * *

 

The Fabrikators are indeed witches, as it turns out. Starkov has the figure of an emaciated scarecrow, but under their hands - or theirs and the two hundred or so tailors who must have stitched at this overnight given that it's at least half solid embroidery, I’m not exactly clear how it works - a garment came to being that makes me look almost like the woman I’m purported to be. Petite and lithe, yes, but unmistakably female. Whatever skin-hugging magic the clothing I wear underneath has been made out of is an undeniable assist.

Genya offers to accompany me down to the hall, but I make a joke out of it at my expense and send her on her way. The truth is, I figure I need to be very careful this morning, and it will be best done alone. But she promises to fetch me after breakfast for a tour. I can’t help but wonder how much of this friendliness is ordered - if any at all is simply that she finds me interesting. I wish I could let it matter. Which is to say, I wish I could let myself care enough about her for it to matter. I recognize what direction this is a step in, but the situation I'm in is the situation I'm in. Better to adapt early than find something to pity myself over later that was my fault for allowing in the first place.

I leave my room, check and double check and triple check that I’m alone, then half hide behind a decorative table with a large bouquet of flowers on top that sits against the far wall and cast myself out of sight. The illusion has grown exponentially more steady. During hours of our travel when the sun wasn’t out, I would work the trick over some object or body part the others couldn’t see. It was useful being outside so much - I could pick one of a million leaves and cast it away, working to keep up the illusion as breeze or wind made it wave and flail.

As a result, I am only at about eighty-five percent adrenaline capacity when I make my way on silent feet down the hall and the stairs to perch at the entrance to the main room.

It isn’t as crowded as it had been the day before, but it is clearly the breakfast hour. Young Grisha sit on overstuffed chairs alone and around small tables, drinking tea and talking. Most eat at one of the long tables in the center of the hall. I watch as they come, greet friends, and move to a chair. A servant is there to pull it out for them immediately, push it in as they sit, and a plate of breakfast is set before them. The tables are laden with communal trays and dishes, but each gets their own portion of hot food - some sort of collection of differently-shaped lumps of gray and dark brown. When they're done, they push themselves away from the table, leaving everything where it is.

Seems easy enough. But where the hell am I going to sit? I cast my eyes over the tables. Red. Blue. Purple. And then my eyes slide over, then back to the single black chair, seated alone at its own long table. No others around it. No people around it. No teenagers with questions. No jockeying. No pandering. No hunger for status.

A horrible, wicked smile curves over my lips. 

At some point I should really do something about this desire I seem to have to see how much shit I can get away with before someone literally has me whipped. This, however, will not be that time. I mean come on, I'm supposed to be the Darkling's long lost soul mate or whatever. If that doesn't afford me some latitude to see what I can get away with, what does? And who wants to live a life where you don't push some buttons once in a while?  _And_ , how often do you get a chance to more or less safely push the buttons of a veritable immortal? Life is for living, that's what I say.

How long I stay living if I carry on like this is a matter best thought about on a full stomach.

I force down the smile and comb my features into a placid look, let the illusion fall, and make my way into the great hall as if I’ve been doing it every day for years. None of the Heartrenders would bother listening to see how fast my heart is racing. I tell myself that, anyway.

It is oddly satisfying the way conversation falls dead as they catch sight of me - or more probably, of what I'm wearing. Mostly because it tells my I have absolutely made the right seating choice.

After only a moment of hesitation, a servant hurries forward the moment it is clear which place I am headed toward, pulls it out, and food is set in front of me before my rear has even made it to the surprisingly comfortable seat.

The gray is fish. Meat. Meat should not be gray. The brown is the rye bread. I  _loathe_  rye bread. I narrow my eyes down at the plate just as my stomach growls loudly enough to be heard in the near-silence. The others have begun pretending to go back to their conversations. I pretend not to notice.

I turn my head in the direction of the servant who gave me the plate. “Excuse me,” I say.

A young woman hurries forward. “My lady?”

“Do we... is there an option for breakfast?” I know what the Grisha eat. Every. God-forsaken. Morning. But. . . man, if a black kefta can buy me something, it has to be an alternative to pickled fish for breakfast.

“...My lady?”

“...Ok, how about this,” I try, looking up at her, “I’ll take some hard-boiled eggs and fresh fruit. Does that sound alright?”

From the way her eyes go doe-y, I realize my humor and joviality have been interpreted as some sort of dangerous ‘I am literally two seconds from having you flogged for stupidity’ lordly sarcasm. I inject my face with sincere kindness and say, apologetically, “I’m not really a fish person.”

Her relief is immediate. “Of course, my lady. I will see to it. Would you like tea in the meantime?”

“I would! Yes. Thank you.” She titters off, gone from frightened to delighted in a matter of moments. It is hard not to let my smile widen dramatically. I like it when people are happy. Especially people who probably count their best days as the ones when they're only treated like furniture.

A tray of fruit is set in front of me almost immediately: plums and apricots, cut apples and pears - that aren't browned in the slightest - plump blackberries and what look like mulberries, purple figs with honey and cream, small grapes and, of all things, shining, ruby-like strawberries. I suppose when you can manipulate nature, unseasonal produce and oxidization aren't really problems you trouble yourself with.

I brought a book downstairs with me, something on the Small Science that looked beginner-friendly, and I read it as I eat, using it as an excuse to not make eye contact with anyone. I’m not one of them. I’m not here to make friends. I don't want to waste anyone's time pretending otherwise.

Even I am impressed by how much of a dent I’ve made in the gargantuan helping of food by the time a small dish of steaming brown eggs is put before me. When I turn a smile to the servant and thank him, I get a very odd look back, as if I've made a social misstep. Which I have.

I make the staff uncomfortable. Unfortunate, because I don't plan on relegating my manners to people "fancy" enough to receive them.

 

* * * * *

 

The Materialki workshop is a revelation. It smells of metal and leather and chemicals, and every surface is littered with materials and tools, blueprints and sketches with notes and numbers scribbled in the blank spaces. The sounds of sizzling and hammering and the rustling of paper is energizing. I want to put a cot in here and never leave.

I'm gawking in every direction but the one we're walk in until Genya brings me up short in front of a pale, reed-thin man who looks to be in his early twenties (whatever that's worth among Grisha). He also looks like an angry cat gave him his hair cut. David.

He's hunched over a set of tiny glass disks.

“Hello David,” Genya says pointedly and loudly.

David looks up, blinks, gives a curt nod, and bends back to his work.

Genya sighs. “David, this is Alina.”

He grunts.

“The Sun Summoner?” Genya adds.

“These are for you,” he says without looking up.

“Oh,” I say. “Yes. I don’t need them. Very clever though, really.”

He blinks up at me owlishly, but looks away almost immediately. “You know what they are?”

“Well I can make an educated guess. They’re not to dress up my outfit, right? Maybe a nice set of earrings?”

“No,” he replies seriously. I want to laugh, but I'm fairly certain he'd think I was making fun of him.

“I’m guessing they go with those rather stylish gloves you have there about three inches away from them?” I ask, pointing at the fingerless leather things. "With one resting nearby next to the leather needle?"

“Yes.”

“Right. Clever, like I said. But I’d rather work harder to do it the old fashioned way than use a crutch."

"These would be more efficient. And the Darkling wants you to be able to defend yourself."

"Ah, well I'm fairly certain I could set someone on fire if I wanted to. And I nearly blinded someone just yesterday." Genya looks at me, and I know immediately that someone has told her. "If I'd had your gloves, I might have burned holes in his eyes by mistake."

His brow furrows. "That's highly unlikely. The precise concentration of light needed to--"

"If you like," I cut in, "you can tell people you’re working on them and use the time for a pet project. I’ll vouch for you if anyone asks.”

“No one asks what I'm doing with my time.”

“...It was a gesture, David. A sentiment?”

“Oh.”

“...Right. Yes. Lovely to meet you, good man.” I smile over at Genya. “Shall we?”

On a mere mortal, I’d call the look she’s wearing wry.

“You handled him better than most,” she says once we’re out of the rooms.

“Who, David? Delightful fellow, couldn’t like him more.”

“...I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

“No,” I say, trying to inject the sentiment into my tone, “I’m being completely serious. He’s great. Weird as all get out, but it’s a weird I understand. It's refreshing.”

She sighs. “Maybe you explain it to the rest of us some time, then.”

“He likes you,” I say.

She looks at me, naked surprise on her face. “What?”

"David. He likes you. But he's not going to make the first move. I don't think it's in his DNA."

"...Is it that transparent?"

"No," I say honestly. "Thing is, David probably has no idea you like him, at least not like that. I don’t think he speaks the language of 'people' that you're used to, not on the giving end or the receiving one. He sort of lives in his own world, right? Doesn't understand any implication that isn't like... a math or engineering problem? Like if you asked him to go to a ball with you, he would just say 'Why?' instead of understanding that you're  _asking him to go to a ball_  with you?”

“It’s like you know him better than I do.”

I shrug. “I've known someone like him, that's all. I liked him, too. There's just something refreshing about how literal-minded they are. But you have to be blunt with them, like scandalously, comically blunt, or they just tend to stay lost. I like that, too. Literal and direct? Free of guile? Definitely my bag.”

“Your bag?”

“My... thing. My thing. You know, like....”

“Your thing?”

“Yes, exactly!”

“No wonder you like him. You’re exactly as confounding.”

“...I think you meant that as a jab, but I'm actually very flattered. Now, I’ve caught a rumor that I’m to meet my first teacher this morning. 'After breakfast.' Whenever the hell that means. Can we head there? I don’t want to be late.”

A grin spreads over her face. “Good instinct. Baghra isn’t someone whose bad side you want to start out on. Well...  _more_  bad. I'm fairly certain she doesn't have an actual good side.”

“You should encourage and reassure people professionally, Genya, you really have a knack for it. I mean, I was crawling with nerves before. Now? Couldn’t be more at ease.”

 

* * * * *

 

I walk up the dark path through the woods next to the head of the lake with a song in my heart and a whistle on my lips. To hide how gut-wrenchingly nervous I am.

I did a lot of thinking about my situation on the journey to Os Alta. I’m alone with what I know, with the secrets I keep, and given that I know what’s coming, I hardly feel comfortable making world-altering decisions on my own. Especially when I might not even belong here. Frankly, I’m not  _bright_  enough to be doing it on my own. But aside from the Darkling and the mouldy wolfpriest, one other person exists who knows more than she should, carries a world of secrets, and neither wants the Darkling to have his way, or to necessarily end him.

I don’t trust him as far as I can spit (an embarrassingly short distance), and I know he’s the very definition of dangerous, but perhaps foolishly, I’m also not sure he’s a  _bad_  person. In all honesty, if anyone can save this nation, not just now but in perpetuity, it might be him. If he can somehow be dissuaded from his current plan of catastrophic and unforgivable idiocy.

So I’m about to take a very large, perhaps foolish, perhaps even deadly leap of faith.

Baghra's hut, when I get to it, hardly looks large enough to be a storage shed, never mind a dwelling. And it doesn’t have a single window. It’s like she’d set about seeing how much like an ominous witch’s hut she could make her home look. Then again, perhaps that’s exactly the point. Let people know what to expect up front. Save time. Very efficient, really.

The front door is too small and looks nearly ancient. But, I notice, it's a perfect fit to the frame, no crack to be seen, even at the bottom. I take a deep, measured breath, knock twice to be polite, and let myself in.

It is like opening a portal to the heart of a volcano. My hair literally billows with the onslaught of heat. I make a noise vaguely resembling an “Oof!” and force myself inside, quickly closing the door behind me.

“You’re late,” says a harsh voice. It is at once smooth husky and sanded down with coarse gravel, the sort that makes you decry some foolhardy decision to go outside without shoes on.

“No I’m not,” I reply calmly, trying, under the thick heat, to remind my lungs they're familiar with the process of breathing. “ I hurried my tour guide along to make sure of it. Unless I was supposed to be here at dawn. Was I supposed to be here at dawn? If so, this is me not blaming my tardiness on someone else's failure to notify me. See I'm very responsible, really.”

“And you don't shut up.”

She speaks from nowhere. Which I can say because the hut is unequivocally empty. Or so I would swear, until one of the shadows moves and takes the form of a slight, fit, preposterously gorgeous woman with silken black hair and smooth skin and arrestingly pale gray eyes. And yet at the same time it is as if I am seeing some ancient creature, bent and gray with folded skin just under what the eyes can see. The worst that can be said about her is that she is perhaps too thin, and her clothing slightly less attractive than a potato sack.

How anyone can meet her and  _not_  ask if there is a relation escapes me. Unless I consider the probability that they are too terrified to form a coherent thought or ask anything at all.

“So,” she says. Her low voice is - and the thought makes me want to vomit - more or less sex encapsulated in timbre. “You’re the Sun Summoner. Come to save us all. Where’s the rest of you?”

It is a beat before I can find my voice. “Oh,” I say weakly and more quietly than I intend, “you know. There’s that adage about good things coming in small packages. That or I’m a horrible fraud and we’re all doomed. Or it’s buried under a deficit of about 500,000 calories and a solid two months worth of sleep.” I’m aware I’m rambling, and every word makes me feel like I’ve shrunk an inch, but I can’t seem to stop. “Options are good. I like to have options.”

And there it is, that  _hmph._  “Why weren’t you tested as a child?”

“I was. Apparently my abilities were shy,” I add with a shrug that is more a subconscious urge to protect my neck than anything else.

She makes a noise of acknowledgement. And then her expression changes, and I know what it feels like to fall through a fathomless void of nothingness. “I hope you’re stronger than you look, girl.”

My jaw works before I can make sound come out. “You and the rest of the country.” I can hardly hear myself.

I came in here ready to yank my wrist away when her hand darted out to grab it. Really, I did. But much more openly than her son, Baghra apparently has a way of dashing the best-laid plans. That, or she was once blessed by a snake god, because I would swear to my dying breath that I don’t see any movement. One moment her hand is simply not on my wrist, and the next it is, and she is saying, “Now, let’s see what you can do.”

I have never felt the effect of an amplifier before, and so I can’t help the way I cry out or the arch of my spine when our skin meets. It is electric pleasure through every nerve ending, a drug more potent than whatever cocktail is sent screaming through your blood at the moment of orgasm. It is all the best parts of being drunk, the elation of victory, the headiness of knowing you can do no wrong, ever. It is the very concept of doubt wiped away and replaced only with the perfect clarity of knowing, deep in your bones, in your very spirit, that the answer to any and every question is  ** _yes._**  That whatever you try, whatever you wish, you have the power to make it so.

Sunlight erupts through the tiny room, banishing every dark corner and crack, shimmering over the stone walls of the hut. I have to close my eyes against it, it is so blinding. There is no thought in my head of tearing myself from her grip. The very idea would be sacrilege.

She releases me on her own and I am left panting as a small tremor quakes over me, like a shiver.

“So,” she says quietly. “He’s found himself a Sun Summoner.”

I want to quip back, ‘Technically I found him.’ I want to make a joke, perhaps something about personal boundaries. I want to say  _anything,_  but that would require remembering what vocal cords are.

“Well? Show me what you can do. I’ve been told you used the Cut. Try not to break any of my things.” Her voice makes it clear what she thinks of that particular rumor.

It also lets me remember that I have a body and a functioning brain. I collect myself enough to say, “No.”

She narrows her eyes at me, unamused. “I was under the impression you came here to learn, girl. Was I was wrong? Maybe the little Sun Summoner already knows everything.”

I snort. “Yeah, hardly likely. I’ll soak up everything you have to teach me like a sponge. A sponge that’s probably much more dense than either of us would like, but all the same. I said ‘no’ because you and I need have a long talk.”

“Oh?” Very much as in ‘This is going to be good.’ By which I mean ‘This is going to be idiotic and I’m about a millisecond from adding permanent lumps to both of your shins with my pretty silvery cane.’

“Yes. About Aleksander.”

“Who?”

I purse my lips despite myself.  _”Your son,_  Aleksander Morozova, the Darkling. The Black Heretic. The man who has been waiting for a Sun Summoner so he can use the power of the Fold to bring the rest of the world to its knees.”

She goes utterly still, and it is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. “Who are you?” She doesn’t waste time playing dumb, at least.

“That... is a very good question. And the answer is, I don’t really know.”

She narrows her eyes at me, any pretense of humanity, of mortality, gone from them. I feel I must understand now what it is to stand in the presence of a God, and it is literally all I can do not to openly quail. “There are two people alive who know any of the things you just told me. Neither of us would give you his true name. We have kept it hidden, we have never written it down. So how do you know it?”

As I look at her, beautiful and unsettling face full of challenge and promised threat, something, the thing in me that already knows her, this utterly terrifying creature, deflates. I sigh, and sit heavily in the chair across from her. It is a long moment before I find words to speak, and she doesn’t hurry me.

“I’m not Alina Starkov.”

“You’ve got a lot of people fooled, then.”

“Only because I left the company of anyone who had ever known her hours after I showed up.”

“Speak plainly, girl.”

I huff. “Yeah, the funny thing is? I am speaking plainly. That’s how messed up all of this is. I’m not Alina. But... I also am. I know her. I remember the big things that have happened to her, I know who she loves, what she hates and fears, the secrets she keeps." I look down at my small hand and flex it gently. "I know what it feels like to be in her skin. I've felt things that I know didn't come from me, they come from her. I am not Alina Starkov."

I pause and look over at the woodstove. I see yellow and orange through the slats, as though a little sun is caged inside, trapped and forced to produce billowing heat for this one, tiny space. "I know  _myself,"_  I say. "But I know her so well it's like I am her. Or was her. Maybe I'm her from another life. Another universe. All I know is that I'm here now, in this skin, in this world, and Baghra... I know...  _everything.”_

I look back up at her, an open and honest expression on my face. “I know you. I know your father’s failings as a man and a parent. I know his obsession. I know how horrible your mother was, what happened to your sister, and how those things shaped the way you raised your own son. I know he took the lessons you taught him and turned them in a direction you didn’t intend. I know he heard and soaked in more than you meant him to, and that lead him to conclude the only safe hands for the world to be in were his. I know how he's gone cold. I know who he was isn't... may not be, hopefully isn't, gone, not really. I know his ambitions. I know his secrets. I know things about him he’s hidden even from you. I know about the stag and the sea whip.” Her eyes go wide. “I know the third amplifier never made it to the firebird, because he used that magic to restore your sister's life. That’s why his journals stopped." I pause, looking at her. Her face is completely unreadable. Slowly I say again, "I know everything.”

For a long time, she does nothing but look back at me, and I think what a mixed bag it is for the world that her son is the one with ambitions. His cruelty comes as a worse blow because his veneer is so calm, but there is something about Baghra that is infinitely more frightening than I think the Darkling could ever be.

Finally, she sits down, both hands on the flat head of her can where it sits on the floor between her legs, and orders, “Tell me.”

 

* * * * *

 

Needless to say, I miss the rest of my lessons that day. Servants come looking for me on behalf of other teachers no less than three times, and Baghra is so fed up by the time the last one shows up - the light outside is growing dim when she lets herself in - that she sends the woman away in tears. My revelations likely have not helped the old woman’s mood. That I am containing mine is a miracle - my clothing passed sweat-soaked some hours ago, and I curse whatever hollow in her she has banished her magic away to that creates this ceaseless need for oppressing warmth. For god’s sake, she lives in a windowless hut, she can’t play with the shadows every now and again?

No. Knowing her, she probably just enjoys having literally everyone who steps foot in this glorified shack thrown off balance by the climate. She is definitely her son's mother, and just now, I would be happy if they both fell to the bottom of never-ending pit and were eaten by Izamrod, or Izamrund or whatever the name of that damned giant worm is.

“So,” she finally says. “So. My son and I dead. You stripped of your power. My father’s amplifiers destroyed.” Her eyes go distant and bleak, and I wonder if I am seeing the chasm that so shook Alina. “Perhaps that’s the best this world can hope for.”

“Fuck the world,” I say with incredulity. “I didn’t come here to ask what was best for the  _world,_  any child could could tell you what that answer is supposed to be. But no one knows the answer, because there isn't one, because we can't predict how everything we do will shape the future. That's kind of the point. Outside of all of this, Baghra, after it, things are going to get very ugly. This little civil unrest between legendary Grisha was nothing, and it would help a good deal if this country was in hand when it comes, if its back wasn’t broken.” The power of two gods wouldn’t hurt either, but I doubt that verbiage will help my case.

Something sparks in her eyes. “There’s more?”

“Of course there's more," I reply. "Your son's merzost will be the least of the world's concerns. But this is the most immediate. And to be frank, this and what comes after, as well as, god help us, what comes after  _that,_  is only what I  _know_  about. My point is, for fuck’s sake Baghra I literally know the future. What’s  _best_  is a philosophical question with no real right answer. So if it’s a guessing game no matter what, then within a reasonable margin of wisdom and good intention, why not just fucking choose what you want and try to go toward it? Destiny doesn’t just happen. Fates don’t just happen. They turn on the wheels of human action. Nature, merzost, whatever other forces exist are intertwined in a web made of our actions and decisions just as much on everything that's outside of our control.”

I puff out a breath. “The rare and old things have a place in this world. The ancient things. Like you. Like your son. Like your father’s merzost.” Like a Sun Summoner, probably. But this isn’t about me, and I don't want to think about that yet. “I don’t share your opinion that trucking with spells is inherent doom, but I do think that most people are too stupid to be allowed anywhere near it. I think it’s a force none of us understand, and  _that’s_  what makes touching it idiocy and arrogance. Can obviously doesn’t mean should, but shouldn’t isn’t necessarily always shouldn’t.”

I wave a hand. “I’m getting off track. Listen. I’m scared shitless of your kid, because I’m not an idiot. But that doesn’t mean I believe he should die. He’s... he’s something special, Baghra, and I think the world suffers when it loses the oldest things, when it’s given over to children. When the best of its magic is killed out of fear and greed. You descended from a Saint, you should know that better than anyone.

“He’s right about some things. One of them is that every generation is basically a gamble on whether or not someone decent _and_ competent is going to sit on the important chair, and because royals tend to be so selfish and entitled, the odds are usually stacked against that happening. The many suffer greatly for the ease of the few. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a right answer, plain and simple as that. Given the fluid nature of humanity, I really doubt it. I know that what he wants to do as it stands is stupid, but he doesn’t see that because he’s so clever and he’s spent so long planning and waiting and wanting and setting up. He’s gone a little arrogant."

She snorts.

“The thing is, he started with good intentions. And our seeds, our roots, they never really go away. Tell me that something, deep, deep down in you, isn’t still angry and hurt over the bullshit childhood you had. Over the way your father’s work was more important than you, or your happiness or _safety._  Over the way he chose his love of otkazat’sya over you." There's a twitch of denial in her face, so I say, "Its been how many hundreds of years, Baghra, and you can't tell me there's any other reason you refused to teach a young Fabrikator named David when you had barely laid eyes on him. Your childhood shaped your son, and he seeks to shape the world. We are all an amalgamation of our roots.”

“And what are yours, girl, hm? Where do you come from? Who were you before this?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, “I don’t know, and I don’t know. Maybe I’m you from the future. What do you think,” I say flatly, “have you aged well?”

She only looks at me darkly.  
  
“Yeah, you’re right, stupid idea. I’m not half so charming and charismatic.

"I’ll tell you what my perfect answer would be: you and your son alive, so long as you each choose, some degree of madness having been exercised, and a reasonable amount of peace and stability for the world at large.

“I honestly believe that in the end, Alina could have had some sway over your son, if she’d just had any flexibility. It wasn’t only her power he wanted, it was someone to walk eternity with. A partner. Someone who chose to stand with him, to love him. Whatever else he is, whatever he has become, whatever you wanted him to be or taught him to be, he’s still human. Humans need to know that someone has their back. That they have a pack to run with, even just one person. He has you, but you know that isn’t enough. You aren't a peer. He’s strong. He’s what you made him. But he’s not you. He held on to a piece of that boy who wanted nothing more than a friend and a place to belong, and it has lived in him all these centuries, as much a fever as his need to fix the world.

“I think he’s been planning this so long, he honestly believes everything will just fall in line. That it’s his destiny. His way is right, the Sun Summoner is the last piece of the plan, and so naturally, whoever it is when they come will see that he’s right in the end. But the more Alina fought him, the more he had to see her as a person, not just a cog. The more he had to face his own... not desire, but  _need, clawing_  need. He’s a little mad. I know that. Or at least perilously close to that line.  ****When he found her in the Fold with her powers gone, he was ready to burn the world.” I pause, again questioning myself. Am I only seeing what I want? Making of him a reflection of my own beliefs? But combing over what I know of him, of what he would do in that other life, I don’t think so.

“I’m no different, not wanting to stand as an island. It’s why I’m here talking to you instead of just handling all of this on my own. I told myself it’s because I’m not smart enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that was just an excuse to not have to carry the weight of this alone. Because sitting here, talking to you, I know that in the end it’s going to be me who makes the decisions. I just... don’t know what those are yet.

“You told Alina to run. You don’t want merzost touched because you learned early in your life that the price of it was  _everything._  You don’t want your son to be allowed to see out his plan, to touch that poison again. You love him more than you love what you intended him to be, what you meant to bring about. You’re a mother,” I add with the twitch of a shoulder.

“You seem, if not exactly happy, then at least content with this waiting game just continuing on in perpetuity so he can't cross what you consider one line too many. But that was never going to hold up forever. You can kill me right now, end the risk, but another Sun Summoner is going to show up sooner or later, even if it takes another six hundred years. And he’ll wait, you know he will. Becoming more intractable and intransigent the whole time. So it’s time to chose the least shitty of a host of shitty options, Baghra. There’s only one I see where your son doesn’t end up dead. If you hope salvation for him... well... you're not going to get a much better chance.”

She looks at me, weighing and considering. She doesn’t have the perfect, inscrutable mask worn by the Darkling, but I don’t think for a moment it’s because she’s not capable of it. Whatever emotion she shows could be just as much of a calculation as the labyrinthine shutters he wears. He did not teach himself that skill; Baghra had him better at reading people than most adults before his age hit the double digits. He'd had natural talent, yes, but that doesn’t hone itself.

“He always did like the idea of destiny.”

“Ok, now tell me you think it’s for anyone but idiots and the weak-minded.”

“If you think that boy is either of those things, you might as well walk yourself up to him and surrender now.”

“First of all, surrendering implies we’re at war. I am very pointedly trying to avoid that very thing. Second... are you sure he’s not?” Of course he’s not. That’s not the point.

She gives a dry bark of a laugh. “I suppose if you’re to be believed, I hardly know him at all.”

“I didn’t say that, and I wouldn’t. All I said was that there was something he kept from you. For Chrissake, Baghra, don’t tell me you actually thought he told you everything anymore.”

“You think I didn’t know he was lonely, girl? I’m not a fool. There is no other way for our kind to be  _but_  lonely.”

“That isn’t what I said, either," I say with more heat than I intend. She hit a nerve. "There’s a crack in the perfect shell he’s built for himself, and only one person in all of history is the shape of the key.”

“You.”

I open my mouth to say ‘Alina.’ But that isn’t true, is it? The key is formed of and owned by the hands that can shape sunlight. My hands. I look down at them, my lips only just parted. Without my permission, my head gives a shake. “No.” Except... yes. But that isn’t right. I’m not the sort of person to toy with someone like that, not even for the sake of others. Then again, Alina did a lot of things that weren’t like her, too. But I’m not Alina. If nothing else, I just don’t have the head for that many layers of lies.

“No,” I repeat. “I’m going to help if I can. I want to help  _him._  But... I can’t lie, not like that. I won’t. If he’s capable of having a friend and proves to be anything other than an insufferable, arrogant ass, I might like to be that person. Because that’s all he is to me. A person. How many centuries has it been since anyone looked at him as something other than a tool or an asset or a means to an end? How long did it take before he became something other than that to you?”

She stiffens and any good humor - and isn’t the very idea a laugh - drops from her face like a boulder down a mountainside.

“I’m not insulting you, and I’m not judging you,” I say, somber. “You wanted a child, the most powerful, capable child you could have, and your reasons weren’t selfless or altruistic. Not in the beginning. But I imagine that changed pretty quickly, at least for the most part.” I pause, then add, gentling my voice, “There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be alone. If you’re nothing else, you’re human. No number of years will ever wipe that away. Not the most basic parts of it. We’re not built to be alone, not completely. Not forever. Your answer was a child. His answer is a Sun Summoner.”

She regards me, then takes a long, deep breath, and leans back in her chair, gaze steady and somewhere in between any emotion, any conclusion or question. She has hardly moved all this time.

“How old are you, girl?” She asks quietly.

I shrug. “I'd guess not especially, but that lives with the rest of the shit I don’t know. Long list.”

“Most people are too stupid to admit what they don’t know.”

I can’t help the arch of my brows or the curl of my lips. “Baghra, was that a  _compliment?”_

“It's an observation,” she snaps, but it does nothing to wipe the grin from my face. “And you’re obviously going to be insufferable.”

“Probably.” I pause, sobering. “But hopefully I can be useful, too.

"I should get back before they assume I’m being held hostage and send a war party. But please think about what I’ve said. The time when we could sit still and just let the centuries pass in perdition and purgatory have ended. Time to pick a more or less reckless option and run with it.” I stand and walk to the door - all of three steps - but pause and turn back. “Hey, does he still like sweets?”

She arches a black eyebrow. “You don’t know everything after all?”

I huff to myself. “If I did, this would all be a lot easier. More information just means more questions. Thank you for listening,” I add quietly.

“How do you know I won’t give you up? Tell him everything you've told me?”

I pause just long enough to think about that. “I don’t,” I answer honestly. “But I’m banking on the fact that you're not stupid, and on your love of the only thing in the world that still matters to you. If that's not enough...” I take a long breath. “Well...” I grin over at her. “I suppose I’ll know who to curse with my dying breath.

"I’ll give you some space." I pause. "If you decide you still want to train me after this, let me know. I'll be here." I'm honestly not sure which option I hope she'll pick.

I’m out the door before she can say anything else, but I don’t get far. The moment the little portal is closed, the weight of what I’ve just done, of the things that have been aired, of the fact that I just surrendered my every advantage, falls on me. I take a moment to root myself to the earth and find where I exist again.

The day isn’t over. I still have to see her jackass, arrogant, lost, arrogant kid who is arrogant again. I haven’t been touching the scar on my hand as far as I know, but I doubt he won’t find another excuse to start what I am referring to with clinical detachment as “the seduction.”

Bile rises in my throat as the my steps pad along the narrow little path. I very much want to punch a tree. But then, this bullshit is hardly the trees’ fault. As far as I know. I live in a world where people live past a thousand and can control primal elements. Maybe the trees run conspiracies here.

There’s one high spot for the day, though: since I missed lunch and the gabbing with Marie and Nadia that Alina would have done, I’ve been spared a sighting of The Mouldy Priest.

It’s important to stay positive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Her not knowing who she is isn't like. . . some deep plot device. It's just the most convenient way for me to keep her slate more or less free of that added later of motivation.
> 
> I added tags to the story. I'm reading Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Spoilers imminent. Or. . . well not _imminent,_ (maybe?) but still.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 3/31/18: dialogue tweaked to have Alina say "tell me if you want to train me" instead of "tell me if you don't want to train me." Because conflict in later dialogue. (Thank you, Megan!)


	9. Unsettling

I find my way to the west stables hoping to meet Botkin, but unsurprisingly, they’re abandoned except for the horses. I happen upon the Darkling’s - a shining, inky thing, and offer to pet its muzzle. It’s standoffish at first. Shocking, really. But to my surprise, it lets me scratch its forehead before turning its back to me to munch on some hay.

I lean against the frame of the outer door and just look up at the stars.

There’s one thing I didn’t ask Baghra:  _Why in the unholy fuck did your dad make an amplifier that allows its Grisha to be controlled?_  Was it some sort of practical joke? A life lesson? Had he had someone in mind when he set about making his holy trinity, someone he hated maybe? I can’t think of a worse punishment for a dickish Grisha, having their power taken out of their hands and then, after the climbing anticipation of taking a second amplifier and imagining what it will be like to have a third, getting destroyed in the end when it’s all taken away instead.

Or maybe, “improbably,” thank you Nikolai, he had planned for a Sun Summoner. Mal had been drawn to Alina, after all. She was hardly the only Grisha he had ever met, and there had never been mention of feeling pull toward anyone but her. With the power of his daughter, or his love of otkazat’sya and their love of the sun, maybe Morozova had wanted more light in the world.

I wonder what I might see in his journals, knowing what I do. In the end, his motivations aren’t much beyond a curiosity. I know what I need to know without them. Still, the mind loves a mystery, and Ilya was nothing if not that.

 

* * * * *

 

By the time I get back to the palace, dinner is wrapping up. Harshaw is still at the Etherialki table with a group of friends. It’s easy to pick him out; there aren’t any other Inferni with hair that’s nearly the color of blood. I manage a few surreptitious glances at him as I study (I’ve progressed to making flash cards while I eat), as well as Marie and Nadia where they sit together by a tiled woodstove, and Sergei where he stands among a group of friends like he’s emperor of the goddamned world. David doesn’t seem to frequent the Main Hall for meals. I make a note to have someone ensure he gets better food than boiled eggs delivered to his work station for every meal.

My mind can’t help but run down the path of the future these people would have walked. Dying, running, fighting. I remember enough of them in battle. What they do when they need to push themselves, when it’s time to be strong. How staggering their powers and drives are. They’re teenagers, yes, but they’re among the most powerful Grisha in the world, hand-selected by the Darkling to serve him personally. Marie isn’t even out of their advanced schooling and she’s already been granted an amplifier, for fuck’s sake.

It doesn’t matter to me that in this world, in this time, teenagers are more or less already adults. Maybe they’re frighteningly powerful and skilled. Maybe they’re chosen. Maybe they’re granted heavy responsibility. They’re still young and soft and untested. They don’t know who they are, and the very idea grates.

Because I was late getting here, I’ve hardly inhaled my first helping when I notice faces turning in my direction. No. Not my direction - they’re looking behind me. My eyes slip closed in annoyance. I feel a body next to mine and open my eyes to find Ivan leaned over me, well into my personal space, his weight on one big hand where it sits next to my plate.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” He asks in a quiet voice. A clearly angry voice.

“You should really work on holding your cards closer to your chest, Ivan,” I say calmly, turning the page in my book for no other reason than to annoy him. I’ve been enjoying this one, actually - it’s a history book, and I’m at a section on the founding of the Second Army, something of particular interest to me since I know the brilliant Darkling behind it wasn’t just an obscure historical figure. It’s like character research. Background information. I’d feel like I was cheating if he wasn’t so fucking terrifying. "I'm shocked you would lack so much subtlety. Shocked, I say."

“Get up,” he half growls. “Come with me.”

“You might try ‘please.’”

“Oh, I’ll try something, but you’re not going to like it,” he threatens.

“Do you always talk to people in black kefta this way?” I ask lightly. Despite the fact that our voices are too low to be overheard, the other Grisha absolutely are gawping at me, now. From the way he’s standing, they probably think he’s hitting on me. Or that we’re talking about the nooner we had.

He leans in closer and his voice goes caustic. “Get up or I will remove you.”

I hum, then say, “You’re lucky I like blunt,” amusement dropping from my voice as I shuffle my papers into the book and snap it closed. I bring my plate with me when I stand and follow.

He looks down at it like it has personally offended him. “You aren’t the Darkling, Starkov.”

“No, see, you missed the mark with that one. Right past blunt to stupidly obvious. It’s a fine line, it takes a while. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m sure you’ll get it.” I’m also sure he probably wants to punch me in the face. Well, depending on how literally he takes gender equality and is bothered by the fact that I am literally almost half his size. He is  _seething._  But I am myself, so I just keep walking like there’s not a man twelve inches from me who could rupture my cells or snap one of my femurs without blinking.

Besides, Ivan is an asshole. Tragic story, more tragic past, still an asshole. The powerful men in this building are far too used to everyone being too cowed by them to act like they’re not being colossal dicks when they are. Come to it, that’s just anyone in power, period. Even Nikolai. He just handles it with more grace than most. Of course, that means you’re not necessarily going to see his teeth until they’re around your throat. He’s a lot like the Darkling in that way. That, and as Sturmhond, he sees the value of having a terrifying reputation.

I stop a handful of feet from the huge, intricately-carved black double doors and wait for Ivan to follow suit and turn to me. I step close to him and lower my voice to avoid being overheard. For his sake. “I know you think I’m being disrespectful,” I say, tilting my head back toward the chair. “I’m not. I know it seems like I am, but I know when to behave, I really do, and I have no intention of undermining him. I’m just flippant. It’s how I communicate.” Hardly an excuse for arguably suicidal levels of idiocy at knowing when to rein it in, but still true. “But I’m not an idiot, and I’m not an asshole, and the last goddamn thing I want is power,  _especially_  his.”

He scoffs derisively. I’d probably do exactly the same. There is no one who could replace his boss. Or maybe it's the idea that there's a person in the world who wouldn't want power he finds preposterous.

“I sat there because I wanted to be left the fuck alone, and I really doubted I’d be allowed to stay cloistered in my room. . . _s,_  while I’m here. Telling these people from day one that I’m not one of them seemed. . .” I pause to find the right word, “prudent. And nice, if I’m pretending like it wasn’t more for my benefit than theirs. Maybe that makes it worse to you, I don’t know.

“I know who the Darkling is, Ivan,” I say, looking him dead in the eye. “I know what he’s done, I know what he’s capable of.” One side of his mouth twitches. An unconscious gesture of arrogant contempt. “I know what he’s done for your- for our people. I know what the world was like for us before the Second Army, before his protection. Fuck, I know what it’s  _still_  like. I know the stories of half the kids in here would make most people sick.”

He doesn’t say anything, but a muscle in his jaw flexes visibly and his eyes twitch as if they want to narrow. I stare him down as I quietly enunciate, “I have lost everything. And I’m not talking about being taken out of the army, something I know you consider a great honor, but if you’d stop to think about what it means for  _me,_  you might be a little more understanding. If luxury,” I pluck at my kefta, “was all a person needed, there wouldn’t be so many epic poems about rich people throwing it all away for love or whatever. The nobility wouldn't be dominated by greedy assholes. Soft sheets and bowls of sugar don’t keep people from being profoundly alone, and neither does being surrounded by others.” I lean in toward him, suddenly furious, livid. “And I am more alone than someone like you can possibly imagine,” I spit, whisper-quiet.

“You are an ass, you are angry, and you are supremely arrogant. There’s no point in pretending otherwise - I don’t like mincing words, I think social niceties are a waste of time, and you can’t be stupid enough to not know that about yourself or you wouldn’t be the Darkling’s Second. But I still like you, Ivan. You’re loyal and dedicated and driven, you’re more clever than you let on, you’re proud, you’re a hard worker, and you’re strong, and I don’t mean your powers.

“I don’t imagine you’re short of company at night,” surprise flickers over his face, and it might be tinged with disquiet, “but what about during the day? What about those little peppered moments when duty and loyalty and the mission aren’t enough and you feel the edges of that jagged hole,” I jab a finger into his chest, “that something left behind in you?”

The arrogance falls off his face and it goes red in shock, anger, I don’t really care.

“You know what you’re like and you know what you’re like to deal with, and I  _still_  like you, so,” my eyes narrow and my voice lowers further until it is a hiss, “maybe let the Darkling worry about whether or not I’m breaking his rules, and pull that rafter out of your ass an inch or two when I’m around, or next time you come in here thinking I need to be educated on right from wrong and acting like a superior shit, I’m going to punch one of your perfect fucking teeth out.” My eyes are narrowed to slits.

I turn immediately and walk through the flawlessly ominous black doors. The oprichniki guarding them have to scramble to get them open fast enough.

It’s a walk down a hall that seems to exist only for the sake of itself (if there are hidden doors, I am too pissed to indulge curiosity and look for cracks or releases) but I’m so angry that it goes by in a blur. At its end is another set of doors, these sized for an actual human, black (because we’re working on a theme here), and much more simple, though the Darkling’s symbol stands out in stronger relief carved half on one door and half on the other. I stop and make myself calm the hell down, because I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to set foot in that room off balance. For a long time, my fingertips rest on a cool handle, before opening one and going through.

Here are the walls covered in maps larger than formal dining tables. Here is the actual table in the center of the room, massive and thick and black with subtle mother-of-pearl accents around the edges. And here is the Darkling, seated at its head, facing me, reading through a stack of papers. I cast a quick glance at him when I enter - my eyes are away when I see him look up at me. I don’t look back at him until I’m seated - and I have to consider just for a moment where to deposit myself - at the chair lefthand of the head of the table opposite him. I set my book and quill aside and put my plate in front of myself, popping a scrap of bread into my mouth for something to distract from the feeling of sitting there and wondering what I’m supposed to be doing with my hands and why every feature and expression on my face suddenly feels conspicuous and awkward. Coming in here on the foot of being angry is nice, a least. It makes me care less.

When I finally look back up and really take him in, my heart stutters. Is there any getting used to it? It’s like standing on the shore of an ocean and looking out so far you can see the curve of the earth. He’s a young man. Perfect, unscarred, somewhere in his early twenties. And yet he has lived through the rise and fall of empires. He’s  _ancient._  He’s everything he looks nothing like.

“Do you have any scars?” I ask, my brow furrowing.

“Scars?”

“Yes. You’re old. You’re so old, and you’ve been at war so much of your life, but you just look. . . perfect. It’s unnerving.”

He smiles like I’m being cute, and I want to hit him.

“I wasn’t complimenting you,” I half-snap. “I was making an observation.”

“My mistake,” he says with a nod, and I don’t think it’s  _entirely_  condescending. “How was your first day?”

My brow furrows in consternation, but I answer bluntly, “Short.”

He glances pointedly at my plate.

“Feeling,” I amend. “I spent the whole thing with Baghra.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and it is a force of will to contain an ungainly sputter of laughter.

“I’m impressed. She can be a bit trying.”

I snort. ‘A bit trying.’ Yeah.

“No you’re not,” I reply without missing a beat, working around a small bite of some sort of bird or another. I tuck it into my cheek so I can say clearly, “That neither of us murdered the other, maybe, but not that I spent so much time there.”

He sets the sheaf of papers aside. “What were you doing?”

“. . .What was I doing. With Baghra. The woman who’s supposed to help me learn how to use my powers.”

He cants his head at me, a wry little smile on it. It makes my blood boil. When I don’t say anything, he asks, “How did you find her?”

“Besides ‘a bit trying’?” I reply, sardonic. I cast my eyes about, looking for a safe answer. I settle on, “Singular. Interesting. I’m taking a block of ice to sit on next time I go, though.”

“I thought we were saying what we really think.”

“I yelled at you for it, you never actually agreed.” And aside from the fact that I don’t like one-way streets, I’m hardly about to hand him anything.

“If that was you yelling, I’ve overestimated your temper.”

“Figure of speech, if you like,” I say. “And what are you talking about, temper? I’m delightful.”

A full, human smile takes his face, and I very conveniently need to look down at my plate to tear off another piece of dinner roll right at that exact moment. “What do  _you_  think of her?” I ask with false lightness. “Any survival tips? I know you trained with her.”

“. . .You talked about me?” He sounds genuinely surprised. Or "genuinely." Who the hell knows with him?

It’s my turn to laugh. “You came up, yes.” He hides a flashing look of confusion and this one, I think, is definitely real. “But not that. It just makes sense,” I say with a shrug.

“An educated guess?” There’s something under his voice that makes me nervous.

“More or less, sure.”

Something in his face changes. “You seem to have a talent for those.”

I shrug. “Only when it’s obvious. Her marks are all over you. You even look alike. Is she your mom or something?” I glance up at him. It is sly and careful, masquerading as politely curious and mostly disinterested.

“I never knew my mother,” he says easily enough.

I lie just as seamlessly. “I suppose we have that in common, at least. Aunt? Cousin? Older sister? You look too much alike not to be related. They eyes," I gesture toward his, "are incredibly rare on their own, but you have similar complexions, too, similar temperaments--”

“Excuse me?”

“Scary on the outside,” I jut my chin in what I think is the general direction of her hut, “and scary on the inside,” I tilt my head toward him, “are both still scary. You each have claws and teeth. You just keep yours retracted until you want to use them. Or am I misjudging you?”

“I thought you weren’t afraid of me.”

“I’m not. Not personally. You haven’t given me a reason to be.” Something like confused wonder passes over his face, and I want to hit him again. Mostly because since I realized I don’t know him as well as I assumed, I can’t actually tell how much of it is an act. “But I’m not personally afraid of sharks or bears, either. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand that they could gnaw my face off as soon as look at me. You find me useful,” I say, spearing a potato in some kind of incredible dark gravy. “So for now, I’m ok. So long as I don’t go burning any more parts off of important people at inopportune moments.”

He puts his elbows on the table and rests his chin on gracefully intertwined fingers. “He’s fully recovered, by the way.”  I don’t hide my scowl. “A Grisha healer was summoned.”

“My condolences to whoever it was,” I say sincerely. A thought occurs to me and my eyes snap up to him, genuinely worried. “I didn’t make more work for Genya, did I? Fixing his hair or whatever?”

There’s that studying look again. “You're fond of her.”

“And you seem fond of not answering questions.”

“No.”

“No you’re not going to answer my question, or no I didn’t make more work for her?”

He pauses. “Genya serves the Queen.”

I suppose that's answer enough, but I look back at him, and I know my face is unreadable. Which in this case will probably tell him that I know it’s not that simple. That “simple” is the last thing her situation is.

I resume chewing a bite stuck in my mouth, pausing long enough to say, “I like her fine. She’s not an idiot, and she’ll tell me off if I deserve it, no matter what I’m wearing. She has a good heart, which is rare. Especially in the hands of someone who can protect it. And she’s a good person. I tend to not hate those on principal.”

“You appreciate bluntness.”

“And apparently you like to state the painfully obvious. Which is surprising for a person so moulded around subtlety.”

“I suppose that puts us on more level ground, then.”

I look up at him in question. “What does? Being surprised?”

He gives a dip of his chin, and I make a rude noise with my lips.

“I’m not making a joke,” he says seriously. “I never knew if you would come to me.” His phrasing, his fucking  _intentional phrasing_  makes something in me quiver like I’m a helpless bundle of estrogen from a romance novel, and I can only keep most of the cold hardness from my face. And I can’t even argue because I literally walked up to him and presented myself. “I hoped, but I couldn’t know. And whatever I might have expected, it wasn’t you.” He pauses, then adds in a quieted, thoughtful voice, “I find you curious, Alina.”

“. . .You can’t actually mean that.” My voice is not entirely steady.

“Why?”

“Because you-- Because--” I sputter, but eventually manage to regain my composure. <i>Because you're like eight hundred and stupidly complex?</i> “It must be novel, old as you are,” I say, dismissively shoveling more food into my mouth.

“That isn’t quite the word I would use for it.”

“Obnoxious?” I slosh out, intentionally filtering it through a mouthful too large for my gob. “Unfortunate? Ominous? A sure sign that you've displeased the gods?” I pull my lips up in a sarcastic smile that doesn’t go within a yard of touching my eyes.

He leans back in his chair, leaving his fingers twined. He doesn’t have to say he sees through what I’m doing, the veneer of rudeness. It’s written all over his stupid, knowing face.

“What did you talk about with Baghra?”

“How dreamy you are,” I say flatly.

He doesn’t react. “She doesn’t normally have the patience to spend so much time with anyone.”

“I told you, I’m delightful.”

“Still, I can’t imagine it was easy. You must be tired.”

“I’m always tired. I’m living for the day you said it would get better. That and I’m eating you out of house and home.” I gesture down at my mostly empty plate. “This is round two. I missed lunch, but still.”

Mentioning that was a mistake, because his interest redoubles. “. . .Are you homesick?” Whatever reason he has for not pursuing the topic does absolutely nothing but make me antsy.

I snort quietly, burying the feeling of caustic bitterness a mile underneath anything I am willing to show him.

“Not even for your friend?”

My eyes snap up to his and I stare at him, wary. I do not want him within a hundred leagues of Mal or anything having to do with Mal.

“The one you wanted your compensation sent to. He was the reason you used the Cut, right?”

My mouth pools with saliva, but I make myself hold off swallowing. I'm not surprised that he knows, but it's still unsettling. Did he interview Mal? What was asked, what was said? "I was pretty keyed up by that point," I say carefully. "It was sort of the grand finale."

"For you to be able to call on that kind of power, he must mean a good deal to you."

"He's dreamy, huh? I'm sure I could introduce you. Or who knows, maybe you're related to him, too. Maybe he's a long-lost cousin." My face goes flat, and if it wears any expression at all, it will be interpreted as old anger. “To answer your question, I am home. What’s to be sick for?” I suppose it’s true enough, whatever home can exist for whatever I am. The words are bitter, but what other truth is there about my situation? I've only ever really existed here. Around him.  
  
It's unsettling.

He says nothing for so long I'm sure I'm meant to look over at him. I don’t.

“I know it's difficult,” he says softly. I grind my teeth together, refusing to look at him or to speak. "It always is, no matter what age a Grisha comes here. But you had a life before this. Perhaps even someone you cared for."  
  
I ignore him.

Eventually he asks, “How have you been treated?”

I do turn to him then, confused. He indicates my clothing.

“Oh.” I hesitate, then shrug as I take my last bite of food and push the fine gilt plate away. It’s a good indicator that this conversation should end soon. Especially because despite how I’m behaving, part of me really doesn’t want it to. “. . . I’m curious why you would ask that,” I say. He is, if nothing, master of his domain, and the Little Palace is its heart. He knows exactly how his people will have been treating me. But I go on, because I don’t actually want him to answer.

“I made it clear I’m not here to make friends this morning, and like I said I’ve been sequestered in a horrible sweat box all day, so its been fine. The students leave me alone, the adults are busy, the staff have given me a title I don’t deserve, teachers will presumably just teach,  _especially_  since I’m in black. I don’t have time for a social life anyway, right? I have what, fifteen years of missed education to make up for as fast as possible?”

His eyes narrow curiously and he looks like he’s trying to decide what to say first. I expect that bullshit line about how it will get better. Instead what he says is, “What did you do this morning? To separate yourself?” His tone is utterly unreadable. If it was anyone else, I would know from the slightest inflection what they expect or hope for or want to avoid. Not him. He gives no clues. He leaves you utterly on your own unless he wants to do otherwise.

“I’m sure Ivan’s waiting to give you an earful about that. I’d hate to ruin it for him. He’s reinvented indignation in the last twenty minutes over it. I hardly blame him, but still.”

He raises an eyebrow, but I just stare back, not budging.

“Why, then?”

I look away, thinking, and for a long time, I don’t have anything to say. He waits patiently. When I find the thread I’m looking for, I say speculatively, “Explain something to me.” I look back up at him. “How do you do it?”

He cocks his head to one side. “Do what?”

I sigh, frustrated and off-kilter. I wasn’t planning on anything remotely so honest yet, even if he can’t possibly guess how walls-down it is for me. “You said it was easier for you because you’d been set apart since you were a child. Easier isn’t the same thing as easy, and never having a thing can make you even more sensitive to its absence than having it and then losing it. You’re the only one of  _your_  kind, and you’re in a position of power, which means you don’t have any peers. You’re old, so old that normal old people must seem like obnoxious children. You’re smart and clever. You’re different with a capital ‘d,’ and not just because of what you are or how you are, not your position or your personality." I pause. "Tell me you are not utterly alone.”

This is a stupid thing to be talking about, but if I’m being honest, it was going to come up sooner or later or I was going to lose my mind. And it’s not like I’m going to ask Baghra about it. All I can imagine her giving me is some prickly version of “Suck it up, kiddo.” I know she loved him. I know she did. And it’s still no wonder he grew up to be a crazy person.

For a long moment he just watches me. “What makes you think I’m that different?”

My look is so unamused it could crack granite.

He shakes his head. “That isn’t what I mean. I’m asking why  _you_  think it. You’ve struck me as something of an egalitarian - all people are just people in the end, right? You said you aren’t just talking about power or authority.”

I huff a breath and slouch so deeply backwards into my chair that if Starkov had any body fat, I’d be giving myself a double chin. I nibble on a thumbnail. “I don’t know,” I finally say. “You just are. Everything about you is different, even the parts that are the same.” I won’t look at him. It would make what I just said too personal. Instead I go back to what I was saying before.

“How many people even know your name? Your real name.” I tap a fingertip on the table. “How many people in the whole world? How many people ask who you are under the title, except as a means to try and manipulate you? How many people in the last year, five years, hell, hundred years have wanted anything from you other than sex or power or your death? How many have looked at you as anything other than a superstition or a toy or a tool?”

I hoist myself up to a posture somewhere in the neighborhood of erect and lean into the table, folding my arms on its top. On second thought, I bend my head and rest my hands against it, twining my fingers in my hair and mussing the styling that has survived the entire day unscathed. “What I’m saying is. . . Does anyone even see you as a person?” I lower the hand closest to him so I can look at him.

There is something behind his eyes, behind the study and and curiosity and the manicured attention. It leaves me with an impression of a hole that can’t be filled, of a want that is almost angry. There is bitterness there, and apathy. And  _hunger._

Ah, there he is, then, peeking out. At last.

“That’s what I’m asking about,” I say. “I’m nothing, and I’m now probably the strangest creature in all the world. Just like that. Utterly impossible, but lucky enough to be the precise sort of freak that people have decided they need, they want, even while they continue to fear and curse the rest of our kind, so they’re cheering me instead off stoning me to death or operating on me or draining my blood or burning me on a fucking pyre because I'm too evil to be allowed into the afterlife.

“That’s why I want to know how you do it. How you live surrounded by so many people, but completely fucking alone.” Something stutters behind his face. “Tell me what it’s like to know that no one will ever understand you. To know that no one will ever see you as a person again.” I huff a bitter laugh. “If anyone ever even did in the first place.” There was no life before for me. No life as a soldier, as a no one, as an otkazat’sya. All I have ever been, and maybe all I ever will be, is the Sun Summoner. And I know how many years, bleak and yawning, are laid out before me.

He doesn’t speak, and I can’t pick out why until he taps a finger on the table. For whatever reason, run by whatever motive, he doesn’t immediately know  _what_  to say.

It frustrates and annoys me.

I try to work up to a question I can ask that isn’t  _complete_  fabrication. “Am I the first of my kind? The last?” Heat has gone from my voice, the walls are lower than they have been since I found myself on a packed earth highway faced with a wall of black. “Will I live as long as you because I'm different? Longer? I’m a Summoner. Rare as my ability is, I’m still just a Summoner, but I don’t  _feel_  like any of them. I sit out there and watch them and--” I pause, something in me going almost angry in its desperation for an answer.  _”I don’t belong here,”_  I enunciate, almost raw. I look to the middle distance, my fingers curling inward. “But I am here.” My voice lowers to a whisper. Part of me wishes he could magically know what I really mean. “And I can’t do a thing about it.” I shake my head, unable or unwilling to say what I want to: ‘I’m utterly lost.’

Without looking at him, I go on. “I know Baghra trained you. I know she both is and isn’t exactly as hard and knotty as she seems, and fuck but is she hiding some secrets. I knew we would be attacked on the way here. I knew more or less exactly how much I could get away with when I met those shits who rule the country. I know Ivan is fanatically loyal to you because he lost something he couldn’t stand to lose, and he looks at you like you hold up what's left of the world. I can point to two Grisha out in your school who can’t stand each other and I’d bet my next ten meals they’re going to end up a couple before the year is out.” I look up at him, my face naked. “I know you understand. So how do you do it?”

 _Tell me,_  some sick, idiot part of me wants to say to him.  _Tell me you might not be alone anymore._  Because if he isn’t, then it means maybe I don’t have to be, either.

He looks at me for a long time. Then his eyes slip downward as if he’s thinking. He takes a long breath, in and out, before looking back up at me. “I suppose I accepted what I was a long time ago,” he says, and I would swear on anything that, at least for this moment, he is being honest. That I’m getting as close to the real him as anyone sees anymore. “It wasn’t always that way. I’m human. I experienced loneliness. I've felt it in ways people with normal lifespans can't fathom. But pain burns its way through you, Alina, and it cauterizes the edges as it goes. It’s a long, slow process, but if it doesn’t break you, it leaves behind a strength most people never taste. When you were a child, you might have cried when you cut yourself. Would you now? The truth is, I don’t feel as much as I once did. I don’t feel as others do. It takes more to make me angry, lonely, happy. My emotional landscape is a gray sea; it takes a good deal to affect me at all.”

“. . .Yay for you,” I mutter sourly under my breath. I don’t intend for him to hear me, and I don’t know if he does. I flop back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest.

“The good thing for _you,”_ he says, and the minute change in his voice, a change anyone else would just call conversational, tells me the mask is back in place, “is that you don’t have to go through what I did. You are different. It's impressive that you've already realized just how different you are. And fortunate. I don’t think you’ll tell me I’m wrong when I guess that you didn’t have a broad social circle in the First Army.”

I scowl. It appears to be all the answer he needs.

His voice goes quiet and liquid. “You never fit because you were never one of them, Alina. Even when you didn't know it. You already know what it feels like to be on the outside, to be other. But you aren't alone like I was. You don't have to go through what I did. You and I are unique in all the world. In all of history.”  
  
I refuse to look at him, because it’s all I can do against the success of his move. It’s all I can do against the way something in me flutters and twists. Lying shitface. "There are no other Grisha who can summon darkness?"  
  
He shrugs a shoulder. "There are stories and legends, just like there are of Grisha who could call the sun. But if any have existed, I have never found evidence of them. No Darkling has."

I grind my teeth together.

All I say, flatly, is “Yay.”

He’s quiet for so long that I I roll my eyes and glance over at him. “I got the recruitment speech, ok? I got what passes for warm friendly Darkling on the way here while you were trying to give me something to cling on to or whatever, but now I am here, and you’re busy and not stupid so I’m sure you’re banking on human nature to take over the job and sew me into place. We’re social animals. We adapt to fit whatever tribe we get hucked into. It's why prisoners can fall for their captors. I'm not stupid, either. You didn't call me in here because you want to start hanging out. What am I to you, like two years old?

“I’m not complaining; I’m the one choosing not to make friends. I just. . . .” I sigh and make a disgusted noise. ‘There’s something about you.’ But of-fucking-course there is, for Chrissake.  _We all feel it, Alina._  “I don’t know,” I say, churlish. “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Give me a hundred years and maybe I won’t give a shit either.”

“. . . No one wants to be alone, Alina. Not even me.”

I look over at him. “. . .You are fucking infuriating,” I say.

He considers me.  “I’ve been wondering something. Why exactly did you take yourself to my tent? You didn't even stop to see a healer.”

The question catches me off guard, and I blink like an idiot, but recover almost immediately. “Didn’t I mention? I was trying to settle a bet about whether or not you had a performing bear in your pavilion. I figured I'd never get another chance. Now is there anything else, or can I go? I have like twenty books to read before tomorrow.”

For a moment, I think he actually is going to say something else. But all he does is rise and tell me to follow him. I’m honestly surprised. I’m not exactly the wilting flower who wants to blend in, so I figured he would just let me leave the way I came in.

I put it together quickly. What’s going to be said when no one sees me leave his chambers? I can’t keep the anger out of my jaw or the unamused look off my face.

I am not prepared for the way he gently takes my hand.

I am not prepared for the jolt of power and certainty that goes through me, for the way it makes me cry out and lose my balance, for the way his other hand puts itself half on my waist, half on the small of my back to steady me. I am not prepared for the way it sets  _fire_ to me.

I am jerking myself away from him before my mind has come back, and giving him a look that would get almost anyone else locked into a cell somewhere.

He looks like he doesn’t know what to make of what just happened. But he says, “The scar. On your hand.” He looks down to the one he touched. “You asked me about scars. I’ve seen the one on your back, but I wondered--”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yell. “What the hell is wrong with you? I don’t know you, don’t ever touch me again!” I gawp at him for the briefest moment, then give him a look that lives somewhere between incredulity, disappointment, horror, fear, and disgust.

Then I am gone.

I don’t bother to smooth my expression before going back out to the Main Hall. Let them talk. They’ll have better things to say than speculation about where I spent my second night, and that’s something.

I’m at the base of the stairs before I realize I’ve forgotten my book. It's obnoxious, but I take no chances here, so the most damning thing he's going to find is a note in one of the margins that says "david food" to remind me to make sure someone makes him eat better.  
  
Later, the thought that will trouble me more than any other is that he went for the hand when I know for a fact I haven't been absently running my fingers over the scar. It will have me asking if anything that is supposed to happen here can actually be changed.

 

* * * * *

 

It has been a very long time since the Darkling has found concentrating on his work so difficult. He’d had no intention of allowing the visit to run so long. Alina seems to have a way of surprising him, and except for the anger and fear at the end, for which he can identify only two likely reasons, so far she seems more perfect than he could have hoped. Petulant and childish, but perfect. She's young, yet. He was young once, too.

Ivan does not seem to be faring as well.

“She did something you found offensive today,” he prompts without taking his eyes off the reports.

“She’s been sitting in your chair,” the large man says, anger in every syllable.

The Darkling looks up in surprise. His eyes dart to the side, thoughtful, and then a small smile plays at his lips. “Let her.”

_“Soverenyi--”_

“Is there any other behavior that’s troubling you?”

“Not yet, but she skipped most of her lessons today so there’s hardly been a chance to find out.”

“‘Skipped.’” He repeats. “She was with Baghra, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ivan allows mulishly.

“Genya says she shows no real interest in authority.”

“. . .None that I’ve heard about,” Ivan allows.

“I put her in black for a reason, Ivan. I know you’re not comfortable with that, so you’re just going to have to trust me. For now, she can sit where she likes. I see no harm in it.”

Ivan sorely, dearly wants to argue, and it is all he can do to keep himself from glowering. But the Darkling has made up his mind, and he always knows what he’s doing. He always sees the bigger picture. So Ivan acquiesces.

After a moment, he changes the subject. “She’s unsettling.”

The Darkling barely suppresses a grin. When he replies, his voice is perfectly collected. “How so?”

“She puts things together too fast. It’s like she’s inside my head sometimes.”

The Darkling doesn’t bother to try to keep the frown off his face. “I’m noticing that, too. Tell Genya to be careful around her." He pauses. "She's hiding something. I want to know what it is. But we have time yet, and she isn't someone who will handle being pressed well. That’s all, unless you have anything else.”

“No, Soverenyi.” He stands and gives a salute, bowing over the fist clenched to his heart.

“Ivan,” the Darkling says as if an afterthought.

“Sir?”

“Get me her disciplinary report. Make sure it’s complete.” It isn’t the fuse Ivan and Genya mentioned that concerns him so much as her attitude. Though the temper needs to be taken into consideration, too. It’s too early to tell if she’s as controlled as she seems, or if it’s a cloak she wears, but either way, it could be ugly if she’s pushed too far. Her past will answer some questions. "And see to it her book is returned to her."

 

* * * * *

 

I find a little dish of pastries and a note from Genya waiting on my vanity.

 

_Went looking for you this evening, heard you’d been with Baghra all day. I thought you might need a pick-me-up. Enjoy._

_\- Genya_

 

For a long time, I just stare at the plate. I’m not sure if I should negate the good gesture but head off future problems by telling her that I hate sweets, or throw the things away and act like they had been delicious.

In the end, I decide to rip the bandage off and save us trouble in the future. I grab a new book, paper and a quill and ink, and settle on the floor so I can stretch while I read. Tomorrow I meet Botkin. Might as well start working now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11/8/17: Tweaks, added some stuff during the DL/"Alina" convo. Nothing plot-changing, biggest thing was an expansion on him asking about Mal.  
> 11/19/17: added to the DL/Ivan scene, mention of Alina having a secret he wants to know, and being childish and petulant.  
> 2/7/18: Tweaks, toned down the swearing a little.


	10. A Chair

I scratch out a note when I wake up in the morning. It takes a small pile of crumpled paper for me to find a draft I can live with.

Live with.

 

 

> _Sorry I yelled at you like a crazy person last night. Long, boring story._
> 
> _On a related note, that ‘human amplifier’ thing? Packs quite a punch. I thought my spine was going to snap_ _when Baghra grabbed me yesterday._
> 
> _Since I’m here, do something nice for yourself today. Have a_ _piece_ _of pie with lunch, get a massage, skip a meeting with someone you’d rather_ _punch in the_ _throat than_ _l_ _ook_ _at, whatever. Treat yourself._
> 
>  
> 
> _You put me in black (P.S. you don’t pay Genya enough) (P.P.S. regretting it yet? :D), welcome to consequences._ _You’re so young and obviously_ _carefree, I figured you’d appreciate having it pointed out._
> 
> _...I am aware I’d be in a dungeon now if my fingers didn’t glow._
> 
> _I can be bossy, I guess?_
> 
> _I’d apologize for that too, but it would be a lie._
> 
> _\- A_

 

I feel like an absolute idiot for the last part, but he needs to think I don’t care much about how I reacted last night. Because I do, so much so that it’s trying to settle in like a muscle cramp.

At least now instead of thinking I’m possibly unhinged, he’ll just think I’m bipolar. And apparently I ramble when I’m nervous. Which is great, because if you wanted to pick a personality trait to have when you’re trying to hide two worlds of secrets from the freaking _Darkling..._ you know, number one on the list, right there.

When a servant comes to offer tea, I give her the note and ask her to pass it to the Darkling. She doesn’t look startled or distressed or whatever, just curtsies and leaves. I suppose he’s not terribly feared in his own house. I also suppose I should get a wax seal or something, but that likely says more about me and trust issues than anything.

I wonder what others think of him. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat people at the bottom, but I have the suspicion that the Darkling is actually decent to the working class, as it were. So long as they don’t piss him off, presumably. Or betray him. That seems to be his quickest hot-button.

I have a cup of tea ready for Genya when she shows up, fixed as she’d done for herself yesterday.

I hold the cup out to her and say, “I want to look more fierce,” by way of greeting.Truth be told, I don’t like using the delicate things. I’m afraid I’ll break one if I look at it wrong.

“Hello to you, too. I have some time, I can work on you.”

I ignore a little pinch at the offer and instead thank her for last night. “The gesture was incredibly sweet. Er, no pun intended.”

“So sweet you ate the whole tray, I see.” She picks one up and nibbles on it, then puts it right back down with a wrinkle of her perfect, adorable nose. “Stale.”

“I actually can’t stand sweets. I thought about lying so you’d feel good, but with as rare a commodity as sugar is, the idea seemed criminal.”

“More criminal than nearly disfiguring the King?” She inquires innocently as she looks up at me over the rim of her teacup.

I hum thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say more _criminal,_ but certainly more of a travesty. Sugar loves everyone. It would never... ugh, I don’t even want to get into the crap he does. Anyway, I wasn’t asking you to work on me, I don’t want things to get confused. I just don’t know what you peop-- er, well, everyone besides you does for cosmetics around here. And I must have skipped cosmetics day in Basic.” I sip at my tea - plain, but for a little lemon. “I was thinking darker lashes and deeper lips should do it. Nothing overly dramatic.”

She cants her head at me, sending a shimmering, wavy curtain of auburn tumbling. She’s so stupidly beautiful it reminds me of Mal, and to my surprise I feel a little pang. “Confused?” She asks.

“You’re not my servant,” I say bluntly. “I don’t want you to do things for me that other people make you do.”

Something in the creamy, soft skin of her jaw twitches. “You asked for me to be your servant.”

“Only to get you out of that hellhole, not to have you wait on me. I never had that before I got here and I did alright. Arguably. I’ll be better once I have an hour alone with a mirror and a set of tweezers. And some decent skincare products.”

“You act like you did, though,” she says thoughtfully. Her face is either masked or somewhere between emotions, because I can’t read anything from it.

“Did what?”

“Get waited on,” she says. She gets up and moves to stand behind me. “Nothing bothers you,” she goes on, carding fingers through my hair and looking as if she’s considering hairstyles, despite what I just said.

The words are like the beginning of a torrent she’s been holding back. Well, a “torrent.” It’s Genya. “Not the things that should. And then you do get upset by the strangest things, things no one else cares about, or even notices.” She begins twisting my hair into coils and securing half of them up. “That’s what I mean when I say I don’t understand you. I grew up in the court, Alina, serving the Queen. I know the games people play. I know you’re hiding things, and that’s ok. Everyone’s entitled to their secrets. But I’m not used to not understanding someone,” she muses. “I don’t know what motivates you. And to be honest, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I say with a crass snort. Best case scenario she’s excited to have a puzzle, if I am as much of one as she’s saying. Worse case, I’m just one more job to do. I lower my eyes and turn serious. “Not everyone is the same. I don’t think I’m like anyone here, and not just because--” _Not just because of my past or where I come from,_ I was about to say. I _wanted_ to say. But innocuous as that might sound now, there might be a point when it will be a clue I don’t want her to have.

“Because what?” She asks gently. She finishes my hair, and the result is feminine, but secure, and won’t end up getting in my way. She has a gift.

I pull myself up with a start and give her a smile. “Wait until you’ve known me more than a day. Maybe I’m more confusing on the outside, but on the inside, I’m just as simple as everyone else. Maybe my language is just different than what you’re used to. I want things and I want to avoid other things. Simple. And you’re horrid at following instructions,” I say gesturing to my hair.

I get up and head toward the changing screen, sighing as I walk behind it. “And yet so disgustingly good at what you do, I can hardly be mad.”

“I _love_ what I do,” Genya says as I’m hanging my robe over the top. “I just hate the cow I serve. Working on someone sensible is a treat.” She pauses. “Really.”

I can’t think of what to say to that - or maybe there are so many things I can’t pick one - and feel oddly uncomfortable, so after a long silence I change the subject.

I take the gold and black gown - because it absolutely is a gown - from its hanger and ask, “Can you get jurda here?”

“Sure. But why do you want it? It turns your teeth yellow.”

I work my arms into the feather-light, satin-soft sleeves of the kefta and lean my head around the side. She’s sitting on the polished, disgustingly perfect vanity as elegantly is if it were a throne. It is fit for royalty - as I assume that’s what this set of rooms is outfitted for, to host very important visitors - but as tastefully and gracefully done as the rest of the Little Palace. Because of course he would have to have good taste.

“I have like fifteen years of education to make up in a matter of months. And that’s never mind the fact that I’m supposed to start training to literally obliterate the Unsea. Sleep is wasted time. I don’t want to do so much of it.”

She shakes her head as I duck back behind the screen.

“You need it,” she says. “You really do. You just discovered your powers two weeks ago. You’re changing, and the energy for that has to come from somewhere. I’ve heard how you’re eating. You need to sleep, too. Give it some time.”

“I’m not looking to stay up all hours,” I argue. “Even one more a night would help.”

“Because you’d definitely, absolutely limit it to one hour a night.”

I start on the tiny hidden buttons that lead up to my collar. I wonder how people like Ivan - people with bear paws for hands - manage it. Maybe they have bigger buttons. More manly ones. I should find out. He’d love to wonder why I was hovering inches away, staring intensely at his chest.

“How dare you,” I say. “I am the very picture of integrity. Why else would I maul the King and insult the Queen the very first time I met them?”

“That has less to do with integrity and more to do with being a passable judge of character. And entirely lacking a decent sense of self-preservation.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m delightful.”

I laugh, stepping out from behind the screen, moving my hands over my front to smooth non-existent wrinkles.

She takes me in. “I don’t think I will ever tire of seeing that on you. The color suits you perfectly.” There’s something like a light in her eyes, but I don’t think it has anything to do with me. I think that for a second, she’s living a different life in her mind. If me in black can do that for her, then I’m happy to wear it.

“I’ll put in a good word with whoever designed it,” I say.

For a time, we drink tea while she talks about gossip. I do my best to act interested for her sake, but I couldn’t actually care less about rumors. Actionable intel, sure, but rumors are useless. Eventually I ring for breakfast - eggs and fruit, same as yesterday - and ask her about Grisha school while I eat, looking out broad windows that stretch nearly from ceiling to floor.

“It’s not that different from the advanced students’,” she says. “Lessons, books, training with Botkin, work with our powers. The only differences are that they train with Baghra, too, have less practical exercises, and they get more time off.”

“Like recess?”

“Recess?”

“Yeah, you know, time outside to play and be kids.”

“You say the strangest things, sometimes.” I pick that moment to rummage in a drawer for a book. I know it’s conspicuous, but it’s less conspicuous that the blush that’s on my face if the work she’s done on it has worn off. “But yes, twice a day. And they have a day off every week.”

“Only one?”

She gives me a strange look. “You get more as you get older. It’s not like they have errands to run.”

I blow a raspberry between my lips. “Because the older Grisha have so many of those, and are so used to doing things for themselves.”

“No, not errands so much. They usually spend it doing... other things.”

My eyebrows hike up.

“Not _that.”_ She pauses. “Well not _just_ that. They are all young and attractive, after all.”

“Mm,” I say noncommittally.

“I thought First Army soldiers didn’t get regular days off,” she muses.

I give her a look benign enough that it could signify a number of reactions. Because I don’t actually know the answer.

“You said ‘only’ one day, like you were used to more,” she prompts.

“Oh! No, you just hear all these things about what it’s like for Grisha. Balls and feasts and pet firebirds, month-long vacations....” I shuffle things around in the drawer longer than necessary, but my back is blocking her view.

“I’d rather have a kikimora,” she sniffs.

I snort. “Yeah, because I’m sure you do so much housework. It’d spend two minutes with the Queen and burn the palace to the ground.”

“Exactly.”

I laugh and pull up out of the drawer with that same history book from yesterday, as well as a quill and the paper I was taking notes on last night.

“...You’ll find a place, you know.”

I look over at her in question.

“There are other Grisha who come in when they’re older. Not all of the adults you’ll see around here are teachers or on assignment for the Darkling. Most of us grew up here, but not everyone does.”

“Hm? Oh! No, I was just curious. I like knowing how my world works.” Curious, and interested in seeing a certain brown-haired little Heartrender. She should be thirteen or fourteen right now.

“We had lessons in pretty much everything at Kermazin, but I’d never call it anything so formal as school. Besides,” I add, gesturing wryly at my outfit, “I’m not exactly dressed to be one of the people.”

“It would help if you’d stop being suicidal.”

“You want to take all the fun out of life.”

“Quite the contrary. It’s just hard to have fun if you’re locked up for murderous insubordination. I couldn’t decide what I was more when I heard what you did yesterday: proud, incredulous, or certain that you’re honestly going to get yourself killed.”

“What I did yesterday?” I ask, surprised. There is no way she knows what Baghra and I talked about.

She lifts a perfect auburn brow, and when she doesn’t say anything else, I pull a vexed look and move to take more books out of my drawer just to be difficult. To cover myself, I’ve taken something on every topic I know too much about from the library, so I at least have some excuse for knowing something too advanced.

“You did more than one suicidally reckless thing yesterday?”

Ah. She meant the chair. “There’s that word again. I wouldn’t have taken you to be so melodramatic this early in the morning.

“The Darkling will have found out by now, and since breakfast is in full swing, if I’d committed a cardinal sin sitting where I did, I’m sure I’d have been told off to avoid a repeat incident.” I pause, thoughtful. “I bet Ivan would deliver it personally. He’d arm wrestle someone just for the chance to see my face when I get told off.”

“...Why did you do it?” She sounds genuinely baffled.

“Honestly?” I reply as if bored. I decide on, “I didn’t figure I had the patience for a bunch of jockeying adolescents. There are very few of them I might not mind spending time with, and I can’t really pick and choose without giving the idea that I’m willing to play favorites. Better for everyone if I’m left alone so I can focus on other things.” I am meticulously straightening the new stack of books, toying with the corners and edges of the covers.

“I know my company is priceless, Alina, but I’m hardly here all the time. Aren’t you worried about getting lonely?”

My hands freeze. _More than you know._ I straighten and sit back in the chair. I look at her for a moment. “I’m already alone, Genya,” I say seriously, my voice quieted.

I pause, then go back to flippant with a shrug of one shoulder. “Nothing to be done about it, though. I got the ‘you are without peer’ speech before we even made it to the city. I’m paraphrasing, of course, I don’t think he’d say anything nearly so complimentary.” I take a sip of my tea, avoiding the dainty handle altogether.

“If I’m to have a BFF, apparently it’s supposed to be dour, gloomy-pants McHandsy down there.” Genya’s eyes widen as I nod in the general direction of the Darkling’s quarters. “I maintain my theory that he just wanted to seed loyalty to the new order. It was a smart thing to do. I’m sure it’s part of the reason he put me in black, too. The Darkling, the Sun Summoner... I imagine he expects the more cooperation he can count on from me, the better.” I snort quietly. “As if he’d need it.” Let it get back to him. Let him know I’m paying attention. “I bet I’m the unicorn of leverage right now. Half the court must be wetting themselves over all the ways they could use me.”

“I’m sorry, did you say _handsy?”_

“It’s not as dramatic as I made it sound.” I pause. “Probably. Anyway, moving along.”

“Oh no we’re no--”

_“Moving. Along.”_

She sighs. “You are entirely without compassion. But since you insist, if I told you a quarter of the number of requests he’s denied just in the last two days, you’d think I was lying. What is ‘BFF?’”

My hand freezes around the cup, mid-air. “Requests?”

She shrugs one smooth, perfectly-curved shoulder. “Meetings, mostly. Everyone wants to say they’ve had an audience with the Sun Summoner. But I heard someone’s already requested you for a christening. There have been two requests for blessings, and one for a performance.”

After my eyebrows have let themselves back down my forehead, I say, “I guess I underestimated the amount of work I’d be making for him.” I feel a little bad. Busy is busy, and he was already that.

She waves a hand. “Most of the requests are turned down outright. There are probably only a few that will ever even reach him. He sent people ahead to get ready for all of this once you left Kribursk. He’s good at what he does, Alina,” she adds seriously. Then she cants her head. “What does BFF mean?” There’s a spark of suspicion in her eyes this time.

“Good friends,” I say, closing the topic by getting to my feet and packing up a little knapsack that slings over one shoulder. I found yesterday, possibly in what was meant to be a pile of trash, because it is absurdly unbecoming next to the finery of my gown. I stow the quill - I plucked it of feathers and cut it short - in my hair and lean against the footboard of my massive bed and look back at her. She still has a cute, affronted and nearly horrified look on her face. She has yet to look away from my bag.

“Want to have dinner with me at the big kids’ table?” I ask her. I can’t be sure I’ll make lunch.

She smiles, but it’s mostly an indulgent thing, I think. Mostly. “Much as I would love to see the look on everyone’s faces, that’s probably not a good idea.”

I give her a questioning look. This can’t be the ‘You shouldn’t be seen with me too much’ issue, not with the way I’ve been behaving. But I could understand how an invitation to sit at _that_ table would make anyone nervous.

She looks a little uneasy as she hooks her elbow around mine and walks us out the door and down the hall.

“You’re smart, Alina. But you also don’t think enough about consequences, and you either don’t know or don’t care how many people are watching everything you do. I’m not sure which would be worse.”

“Not true! I just have a higher threshold of acceptable social risk than most people. And it’s not my fault if everyone else is stodgy and thin-skinned. Most adults are whiny children in large bodies.”

This time the smile is entirely for my sake. “Everyone cracks when they get here, Alina. It’s just a matter of time. I don’t care how stoic you seem, the fact that your entire life has been upended is going to hit you eventually.” All inside, I shrink up and go rigid like an animal skin dried in the sun. _”And_ the Darkling has done something completely unprecedented by putting you in black. It hasn’t been done, not in the entire history of the Second Army. With the station that gives--”

I narrow my eyes at her and interrupt, “Genya Saffin I swear to God, if this is some bullshit about you besmirching my good name with your dirty servant’s hands, I will set your hair on fire. Just the ends,” I add. “You’ll have to suffer not looking perfect until you can find a good pair of scissors.”

“My hands are immaculate.”

I sigh and pull us to a stop. “I haven’t been doing the things I have because I don’t understand. I do them because I _do._ I hate the way things are. People come up with all kinds of systems to decide who’s better than who and how much they can get away with doing to anyone they consider below themselves, and it’s never based on who’s _actually_ better. It’s a stupid system. I understand it perfectly, and why we use it, and that doesn’t change the fact that it’s stupid.

“If I’m going to have any hand in elevating or deflating people, it’s going to be because of what they’re worth, and as you know,” I say pointedly, “you’re worth a hundred of those idiot kids downstairs, or any noble who would take a look at what you’re wearing and think they know anything about you. Who would deride you because you’re brave enough to do what you’re doing. You want to talk about cracking? Almost anyone else would have by now.”

A satin crease forms between her perfectly-shaped auburn brows. I see the question on her lips. Some form, any form of a request for clarification. But it doesn’t come. I don’t know why, but I’m not sorry for it. Maybe she doesn’t want to play dumb. Maybe she feels like she won’t get a good answer if she bothers. Maybe she’s suddenly trying to figure out exactly how much I could know, and how. Maybe she just can’t figure out what to say first.

“What you can do and the way you look aren’t what make you special, Genya. You’re one of the strongest people I will ever meet.” I pause, and add in a voice that probably seems inappropriately quiet to her, too intimate for someone she’s just met, “And you have a good heart.”

Before denial or guilt have a chance to lash through her, I go back to the topic at hand. “Don’t mistake the way I am for ignorance. Impatience, sure. Annoyance, absolutely. But not ignorance. I act rashly and irresponsibly sometimes, I know that. But for-- If I want to spend time with you, it’s not because I’m unaware of how it would look. It’s because I don’t give a shit.”

 

* * * * *

 

Last night when the Darkling went for my scar, it left behind a seed. That seed sprouted when Genya tried to warn me off of spending time with her. It is now branching into so many questions and philosophical impasses that I trip going down the stairs after Genya has gone on ahead. It’s before I’m in view of the main room, at least.

I’m not Alina. I mean, maybe I am, but I’m not the Alina who was here in another world. If that’s the case, but these small things are still happening, then how much of this is all predetermined? How much actually has to do with who I am or how I behave?

Touching my scar could be muscle memory. I could be doing it without realizing, and I’ll be paying close attention to see if that’s the case. Genya’s warning probably has more to do with her than it does me.

But seeds put down roots, and it’s very hard to pull those out of yourself.

 

* * * * *

 

As it happens, I do miss lunch. I’m practicing my invisibility, buried in one of the forests on the Little Palace grounds. I’m keeping out of sight while I try - and generally fail - to do something else with my power simultaneously. I practice doing it with adrenaline in my veins, doing it at a moment’s notice. I assume bonus points when I get to practice while my stomach pulls at my insides like a black hole.

Often, there’s a telltale sort of ripple in the air when I’m out of sight. No one would know to look for it, but it’s something that could be used later to piece together a question or an answer or the beginnings of a pattern. I can tone it down, but so far I can’t get rid of it. It isn’t a power issue, I don’t think. If I can bend the light, I can bend the light, and I’m trying to keep a woman out of sight, not the Little Palace. There’s something wrong with the _way_ I’m doing it.

I work myself until I’m shaking.

I’m convinced my problem is that I’m trying too hard. Baghra said, will say, maybe, so much about how Grisha power is no different from my lungs or heart. That it’s just as much a part of me. As automatic. So it has to be that I’m just in my own way, somehow. Or maybe I’m trying to move too fast, but I don’t want to think that’s what’s going on until I’m out of other options. Crawling before you run is overrated.

I hope ferociously that she’ll train me, but I’d be stupid to hold my breath over anything when it comes to her. Unless I tire of my tortured immortal life early, then I can just suffocate myself.

It could also be that I’m trying to do this upside down. Maybe what I need isn’t more practice, it’s more meditation.

So I also get to practice meditating while I’m exhausted, cold seeps past my layers and in too deep, and I’m just about ready to start gnawing on frozen tree bark out of hunger.

 

* * * * *

 

I wonder if I can count on the Healers not to tell anyone that they had to heal minor frostbite.

In the end, my desire to not lose the feeling in any of my toes or fingers wins out.

Plus there might be some scraps left over from lunch inside.

 

* * * * *

 

Botkin is frightening, gruff, painfully blunt, and intimidating.

I think I really like him.

I get shamed for not being here yesterday, then put myself in the front of the class. For every stumble, every trip, every jerky movement that is fluid and practiced in every body all around me.

Apparently hiding isn’t something I do. Or at least, I tend toward contrary behavior to hide what I’m really thinking or feeling. Which would be unfortunate, because for someone as good as the Darkling - or even Nikolai - it will be just as easy to read as if I do what I’m trying to hide, or hide from. _And_ it will tell them more about me since I’m bothering to do it in the first place.

And I now need to get Genya flowers in thanks for hiding my - Alina’s - predisposition to blushing.

At one point during the class’s run, Botkin is keeping pace with me - _backwards_ \- and remarking on my stick-like physique (I like to think of it as woodnymph-like. They’re made of sticks, right?).

“You get stronger,” he says. “Then maybe Botkin not have to be surrounded by so many weaklings.” A sputter of laughter nearly makes me trip. Two Grisha passing us don’t so much as chuckle. In fact, they look at me like maybe I’m going light in the head.

“No one here have sense of humor,” Botkin says as if it’s a secret.

He resumes yelling at me to hurry up and stop being pathetically weak. And thin. And out of shape. And slow, and generally useless.

Perhaps he and Baghra sometimes take tea together.

 

* * * * *

 

I hang back until I’m the last one left in the training area. I’m still panting, wiping sweat from my neck and face, and wishing I could strip naked and dive straight into the lake.

Maybe I can. Talk about invisibility practice under pressure.

“You teach younger students, right?” I ask. Pant - I pant.

“Botkin teach everyone.” The diminutive man says.

I nod. “When? I want to come to more of your classes.” He must teach more basic things to the younger Grisha. I’d like to get in on a beginner class, find out when I can spy on Nina and Aidrik, and if my body can handle it, another regular class, too.

That I feel optimistic about my ability to do so while literally wheezing for air must speak well to my ability to push myself.

Or I’m very stupid.

Everything’s easiest when it’s new, as well. The real test will be keeping up what I start.

But there’s a certain... _person,_ coming back to the Little Palace soon, who I have no intention of losing to. And oh, hatred can be motivating.

I’m sure I can find another way to get her kicked out at a decent clip. Between Genya’s devious mind and my pull, I can absolutely give myself the satisfaction of beating her.

Botkin gives me what my thundering, shrieking little heart wants to see as the beginnings of an approving look. “Two every day for advanced students, this and one after. Regular students, two before lunch, beginner after breakfast. Bigger class, sometimes older student help. Good to teach if you want to learn.”

 

* * * * *

 

My underclothes are soaked in sweat daily, but true to Genya’s word, the kefta seems impervious. It comes off of me after every bruise-collecting, ground-kissing training session dry, clean, and smelling like fresh laundry.

Remembering that sparing palace servants from having to do more laundry took priority over a First Army soldier getting corecloth puts a damper on my ability to appreciate it. Stupid compassion.

 

* * * * *

 

Chamber pots take some getting used to. It isn’t using them that I mind - that part is actually pretty great. We were made to do our business squatting, after all. No, what gets me is I’m in this royally-appointed, flawlessly clean set of rooms, and there it sits: literally a basin of my own… leavings. And the feeling of squatting over a fine rug or expensive tilework, even knowing that there’s a receptacle underneath me, is just unsettling.

There’s always a small towel to cover said receptacle up with, usually scented, and it’s surprisingly effective at keeping the smell in.

Please note that surprisingly effective is not the same thing as effective, period. Thankfully, the nose adapts to shut out common background scents, and when this bathrooms system is just “the way it’s done” literally everywhere, by everyone, well... you shrug and do it.  
  
What really bothers me is knowing it’s someone’s job to collect, empty, and wash the things. And whoever does it probably doesn’t even get paid.  
  
That’s what makes me realize what a great equalizer they are, though. The Darkling, for instance. Ancient, immortal, crushingly handsome, master of his every domain, perfectly lethal and horrifyingly pitiless. He squats over a container and craps into it. Nikolai, glittering and charming, immaculately groomed and whip-smart does, too. So does Ivan. Zoya. Baghra.

It’s really hard to be intimidated by someone once you’ve realized that. You can never look at them the same way again. It really dulls the sense of authority, picturing them red-faced and straining.

 

* * * * *

 

I commission a gift for Genya from David. Hair pins, two sets. Long, unassuming, stunningly crafted hair pins, one set suited for everyday use, the other for something formal.

They have very sharp tips hidden under seamless caps that are taken off before wearing, and can be used to kill someone with relative ease.

I’m not certain if she’ll love them, be horribly insulted, or possibly unsetted.

As a backup, I have some exotic sweets ordered.

 

* * * * *

 

Healers come toward the ends of Botkin’s classes so their students can get practice healing minor injuries. I don’t let them help with my bruises - strains or muscles I’ve pushed too hard, yes, but not the bruises, not even when they’re on my face (Genya has a fit the first time she sees me with a black eye in the morning).

Most of the Grisha - not all, but most - look at me like I’m odd. But I didn’t grow up safe and cloistered. Pain is part of life. And there isn’t going to be anyone to soothe our bumps out in the field.

After the first few times I turn it down, the Healers stop asking.

Interesting thing, though. About the time the Healers stop approaching me, Sergei starts to turn them down, too.

The next day, Marie and Nadia do the same.

It becomes a trend, wearing bruises and cuts as badges of honor. The students take to comparing and showing off over meals.

I’m told this newfound grit spreads to the other classes within a week. Botkin is obviously pleased.

It won’t be long before some idiot refuses to have something healed that actually needs to be healed, and I can only hope it won’t lead to permanent damage. And hey, I probably have all the Healers pissed at me for taking away their practice now. So that’s nice.

 

* * * * *

 

Right around the time bruises and scabs are becoming the hottest new accessory, I go down for breakfast as usual.

I come up short the moment I pass into the Hall.

Everyone goes quiet. They go quiet because they are all staring at me. (I should get Genya flowers _and_ chocolates.) I can even see the oprichniki watching me surreptitiously from the corner of my eye.

Everyone is staring at me because there is a second chair at the Darkling’s table. Black with gilt accents. And it is just as big as his. The carvings mirror and compliment his, shining suns where his have moons. But his symbol still sits at the top.

Were I not being watched - scrutinized - I would narrow my eyes. Robes are one thing. This is completely, entirely differed.

What the fuck is he playing at?

 

* * * * *

 

I wonder if the chair _isn’t_ different. I wonder if it’s only that, unlike the kefta, I didn’t know it was coming.

Funny thing about having the answers. It makes it much, much harder to deal with not having them.

 

* * * * *

 

Arguably, it can be said that the chair isn’t a _bad_ surprise.

Perhaps that tempted the balance of nature, and nature sought immediately to restore itself - later that day, in fact.

I spend a good deal of time in the library. It’s large, well-lit - the whole ceiling is glass, it is breathtaking - comfortably appointed, and for some reason I can’t fathom, generally abandoned.

Later, I will wonder how long he must have spent lurking, or who he must have bribed to figure out where to find me and when. Aside from brief meetings with teachers and training with Botkin, calling my schedule erratic would be generous.

I’m powering through what I consider to be an unnecessarily verbose chapter on Grisha assistance with trade routes - Why is it vital that I know this now? And can you have someone imprisoned for crimes against literature? - when someone takes a seat next to me. In the gigantic abandoned library that has no fewer than twenty armchairs and three full-sized tables with yet more chairs.

I don’t have to look up. His smell _wafts._

I ignore him, pretending to keep reading until he says, “Are you enjoying your studies, Alina Starkov?”

“I was,” I say politely, finally looking up at him.

His eyes remind me of shark’s eyes. And they are open too wide, and he looks like he literally wants to eat me.

I cannot help but wonder what drug he must slip into the King’s food daily that his continued presence is not only tolerated, but valued. And what deal, exactly, he thinks he has with Aleksander.

I’ve thought a good deal about what to do when I met this man. I was going to go with acting bright and friendly to lay contrast to all the ways I would innocently make myself abhorrent to him.

That flies out the proverbial window, though, because I narrow my eyes at him and say, “...Are you aware that you smell horrible?”

He raises his brows at me - the most polite response he could give, I think, to an open insult from a stranger and what could arguably be called blatant hostility - but all I do is stare back at him, one eyebrow raised to his two, the picture of uncooperative.

“I’m thinking it has to be intentional,” I finally say, “because it seems cultivated. It would have to be. Are you one of those priests who relies on scaring your flock to keep them in line? The smell of mold and death is a nice olfactory aid?” I want to insult his horrible, disgusting teeth, too, but for all I know he can’t help that, and insulting a person over something they can’t help is about as low, pathetic, sad, and unworthy as you can get.

Abruptly, he looks pleased. I’m not quick enough to keep the fact that it throws me from my expression, and I have the horrible thought that spending more time around this man would be excellent practice for controlling my tells.

“You are very blunt, Alina Starkov.” He is repeating my name as if it’s some sort of code word or magic button. “And clever, I think.”

I see something Alina missed, disgusted and unnerved by him as she always was: there are scalpels behind his eyes.

“I am so pleased you have come to us,” he says. Even his _voice_ reminds me of dry mold. “I fear we are all in need of such honesty.”

I say nothing. The Apparat is not a snake, and he is not a shark. He is a remora.

“You must enjoy having so many books at your fingertips.”

I still don’t answer, I just look back at him mulishly. Because I do, in fact, enjoy having access to so many books.

“Knowledge can only take a person so far, however, if their soul is burdened,” he goes on. “I am the spiritual adviser to all those within the palace walls.” _Have you considered_ advising _the King to stop raping people and throwing away money while his people starve?_ I don’t ask. “Should you find yourself worried or in distress, I hope you will not hesitate to come to me.”

 _I’m worried and in distress over the fact that it looks like you literally want to eat me._ “Oh,” I assure sincerely, “I absolutely will not hesitate.” Because that would imply any part of me would ever consider, even for an instant, actually going to him.

"Good, good.” He smiles, baring those horrible crowded yellow teeth. He either has a rare genetic mutation or some horrible disease to have his gums pigmented they way they are. They’re truly blackened. Maybe he dyes them. Being the spiritual advisor and all, he has to make sure he looks approachable. “I want us to be friends, Alina Starkov. It is so important that we are friends.”

I make the mistake of asking an uncertain, “Whhyyyy?”

“There are things you do not yet know. Many things, perhaps.” He leans in. I lean away in equal measure. “There are whispers. And you will find, I think, that I--”

“What whispers?” My smile, flat and unamused, matches my tone. “That I’m a Saint or something?”

He isn’t surprised. There is no surprise, and it is deeply, terribly unsettling.

“And so of course we should be friends,” I conclude for him. “Hence this whole creepy display of what I think you’re trying to have come off as warm and friendly.” I lean back in toward him just long enough to loudly whisper, “It’s not working.”

Something flashes behind his eyes, too fast for even me to read. He cants his head. “The people whisper your name, Alina Starkov.” If he says my name like that again, I’m going to punch him in the throat. “What do you believe?”

I consider my answer. “I believe, Apparat, that I take belief very seriously. It’s the most powerful force in the world, isn’t it?” I ask the question in an overly personal manner, as if we have had many conversations, and I am discussing something divulged in private, a secret he has confided.

Answering a trap question without answering it. Nikolai would be so proud.

His eyes widen, but only in a way that makes him look more hungry. “You and I are one in this.” It is all I can do not to recoil. “Not Kings, not armies, not even faith. _Belief.”_

“......So is this just a social call, or...?” I prompt.

I’ve considered turning down what’s coming next, but if I did, he’d just find a way to get it into my possession sooner or later, and I can guard it more carefully than Alina had. Aleksander has the journals, he already knows about the amplifiers. But there was something special about this book to him, and I don’t necessarily want him to know I have it.

I know what I need to do, and I’m not planning on giving away an acute reason to have my room tossed. I’ll just hide it in plain sight. Or I could always burn it and say a prayer over the tormented spirits that would invariably be freed and rocket into the sky, moaning their woes into the night. Something dramatic like that.

On que, he says, “I would be pleased if you would accept a gift from me.” he reaches into the folds of his brown robes and yes, the motion is deeply unsettling. All he removes, thankfully, is the small, bright red, leather-bound book. The _Istorii Sankt’ya._

I look over at it, but don’t take it. Eventually, he leans forward - upsetting his robes and, I’m certain, sending out a cloud of mold spores - and sets it on the little table next to me where my tea, which I will now be throwing away, sits with a tray of snacks. Which I will also be throwing away.

I may also tell the servants to have the tray soaked in boiling water for fifteen minutes before using it again.

“There was a time when all Grisha children were given this book when they came to school at the Little Palace,” he says.

“I know,” I answer, my voice unreadable. I reach for the book, forcing down the feeling that just touching it will infect me with something, and pull it toward me. I flip through the pages until I land on Ilya. Sure enough, he stands present, arms spread, morbidly adorned with the means of his “death,” and there around him are the stag, the serpent, the firebird.

His work had been so secret. I wonder how enough of it had come to be known, to survive, to make it into the symbolism associated with him. I suspect Baghra had something to do with it, or maybe her son. I can’t think how else it could have happened.

“Peasants love their Saints.” Again he sounds pleased. “They hunger for the miraculous. And yet they do not love the Grisha. Why do you think that is?”

“Ideas are more palatable than realities,” I reply without hesitation, still looking at the drawing. The book is carefully positioned so he can’t see what page I’m on. “A dead miracle in a book is a lot more digestible than a flesh and blood man or woman who could decide they didn’t like you and flood your root cellar in a fit of pique. Alternatively, it’s latent jealousy because we’re so like them but have something they can never attain. Personally I don’t favor that theory, not for most people.”

“Clever, indeed.” Jesus but he makes the most innocuous of sentences sound like predictions of sweeping black death. And it wasn’t even that clever. “I think it is because the Grisha do not suffer the way the Saints suffer, the way the people suffer.”

“Oh, the Saints? You mean the ones who were brutally murdered by the people for having powers they didn’t understand? Like Grisha do? Horse manure,” I say with certainty, calmly looking him in the eye. “Grisha suffer more than anyone.”

“Do you think so?”

“I have a brain and am capable of looking past the surface of a thing, so yes. We grow up in a palace. We have nice clothes, special training and protection, rich surroundings. So we’ve got it made, right?

“Except for that ‘lack of love’ you talk about. I’ve only heard the stories of a few of the students here so far. My favorite, though by no means unique in how horrifying it is, was finding a brother hung upside down, drained of blood like a pig, for a cure-all that you’d think someone somewhere in history would have figured out works for absolutely nothing. I’d like to think that, anyway, but people aren’t that smart. They hate letting go of dead things. And do you know what people will cling to harder than anything else, even if it’s slowly poisoning them? Belief. I mentioned that. It has a downside, just like everything else. Just like being a peasant, or an orphan, or a soldier or a priest, or a King or a Darkling. Or a Grisha. Do you know what I like better than beliefs? Ideas. It’s not as easy to control a person with an idea.”

This is not an opinion I want to express to him. It does nothing but undermine my entire tack with this idiot (not idiot). But I’m going now and I don’t seem to be willing to stop.

“A peasant doesn’t have the opportunities of a Grisha who comes here. They have their hardships, their struggles for understanding and love. A peasant doesn’t get an education, unless they’re lucky enough to have parents who read and see the value in teaching them. A peasant may starve to death, or freeze if the winter is too cold, die of thirst if the summer is too hot, starve if commerce or crops are unforgiving.

“Grisha have Druskelle. Some of them won’t eat meat, but they’ll hunt a child like an animal and burn him alive on a pyre so he can’t enter the afterlife. They have Shu surgeons who will keep us alive while they cut us open and dissect or remove our organs and bones. Kerch slavers snatching us or our parents or siblings up and selling us for small fortunes to anyone who will buy.” I pause. “People who will bleed them like animals the first chance they get.

“ _Some_ of them come here. They get to wear the clothes and eat the food and have the training. They get to know what it’s like to be so well off and physically secure that they have people waiting on them. But everyone still hates them. Your average peasant might kill them just for what they were, if they thought they could. And if they don’t come here, they live their lives on the run, trying to outpace death and torment that’s actively seeking to snatch them up. They can’t stop, they can’t settle down, they can’t know what it’s like to have a home. All their lives. And god forbid they have children, because that’s probably the only world that child will ever know. Hated for nothing more than what it is.

“If you don’t think that’s suffering, I genuinely do not want to know what your benchmark is.”

A smile draws his lips back, as if he is proud of my answer.

“You speak as if you are one of them. As if you always have been. But are you, I wonder, are you truly? If we did have a Saint among us, could she be something so simple? So worldly?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “First of all, I have always been Grisha, I just didn’t know it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an advantage. I get to see both sides. I get to live them. Second, I’m capable of empathizing with every group, even the ones who hunt us, so you can put that right back in your pocket.

“Now, since we’ve come back around to the me and profound questions, let me guess,” I go on, eager for this shitfest to be over. “You’re going to slide this into how _I’ve_ suffered, and make some ominous prediction about how I’ll suffer more.” Something almost like fanaticism sparks behind his eyes, and I exhale sharply. “People have tried to buy or force my friendship, but you’re the first who’s tried to _scare_ it out of me. I’d give you points for originality, but frankly you do a great job of making yourself completely unlikable. And you’re creepy,” I finish flatly.

“You are so honest, Alina Starkov,” he says. Were it not for his reaction to me pre-empting his dire prediction about my future, I’d say he isn’t affected by what I’ve said at all. “It is something sorely lacking in this world. It is refreshing to know you do not hide behind pretense as so many others do.” He obviously intends it as a compliment. I do not take it as a compliment. Neither do I roll my eyes as I want to.

I suddenly feel a little sympathy for the Darkling who said _I didn’t ask for flattery, Alina,_ when he wanted to know what stories she’d heard about him, and isn’t that a trip.

I know the Apparat is slime - capable slime, yes - but I’d had no idea how nimble he was on his feet. Either the Darkling works harder to manage him than I know, or the Apparat has found it suitable so far to play small. This man is a coiled snake. Which is an insult to snakes, because at least they make sense (and really, remora is so much more accurate). Their actions are always in accordance to their nature and the situation. They are clear, and they broadcast their intentions.

The Apparat isn’t a snake. He’s a human. I don’t know a worse or more accurate insult.

“...Yes. Well. In the spirit of ending things on a high note, you should let yourself out now. As you pointed out, the hungry mind needs feeding.” I turn away from him, ignoring his presence entirely, and letting the color of my kefta and the way I hold myself speak for me. For all he knows, I have exactly the authority needed to dismiss him.

He pauses long enough to set my teeth grinding, but I don’t let it show.

“You heard the Sun Summoner, priest,” a cool voice says from the doorway.

My head snaps up to find the Darkling, Ivan standing just behind and to the side, arms crossed and looking unamused. Well, more unamused than usual.

I need to get Genya flowers, chocolates, and a kitten.

The Apparat is quick to greet the shorter-- the less tall man, utters a loud and clear parting to me - mustn’t let them see they got you - and leaves in a cloud of stink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [kikimora = female house spirit.]
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> I have an [ask/prompt box](https://ahab2631.tumblr.com/ask) on Tumblr now. And I actually log in sometimes now.
> 
> Rule: if you use it don't apologize for asking for stuff. You do you. <3
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 8/15/18: Chamber pot scene added


	11. Switcheroo

“Ivan,” the Darkling says over his shoulder, “see to it that he gets back to the Grand Palace safely.”

The big man bows, then leaves to follow the Apparat.

“You have a knack for last-minute saves,” she says with hollow levity and, he thinks, some appreciation. But she says it as she turns back to her book. She’s consistent, at least.

“And you may have more patience than I gave you credit for.”

She snorts.

He approaches her and indicates a chair at her side, the one opposite the Apparat’s. “May I?”

“It’s your castle. Or. . . well it is, right? I’m starting to get confused.”

He gives a little twitch of his lips upward. “I came to speak with you about that, actually. What did you think? The chair,” he clarifies.

“. . .I can’t answer that question.”

“Why?”

She’s too smart to believe anyone would think she’s reading while carrying on a conversation. At least a conversation with him. She’s selling the lie, though, moving her eyes side to side. She may not be afraid of him, but there is something else there. It isn’t dissimilar from the pull he has on other Grisha, but it isn’t exactly the same, either.

“Because I don’t know what it means yet,” she says.

He gives another little smile. “I was a lot like you, once.”

“You were an orphan yanked out of the First Army and accused of being a Saint? Or did you once have breasts?” She adds, her voice a blade’s edge under the sarcasm.

She makes the dance so easy. She telegraphs her steps. “Untrusting,” he replies.

Her brows shoot up. “This is you trusting?”

“I’m cautious,” he counters. “I have to be. Because of my position, because of the nature of my powers, and because of the people I’m responsible for. But you have to remember, I didn’t grow up--”

“Name one person you trust,” she interrupts aggressively, though her tone is flat and well in hand. “And I don’t mean ‘trust to carry out my orders, not lie to me, teach my kids’ trust. I mean personal, actual trust. _Then_ we can have that conversation.” Her eyes burn with the word ‘Hypocrite.’

He lets a sad quirk of a half-smile onto his face. It’s strange, pretending. Faking emotion. It’s strange in a way it hasn’t been for a long, long time. It’s strange because it’s her. His answer, his Sun Summoner, the culmination of his every plan and hope. All of which makes it that much more important to do. For now. At least she makes it fun. “I did,” he says. “When I was younger. It isn’t quite so simple when you outlive everyone you’ve ever known. Or when you realize there's no one in the world capable of understanding you any longer.”

There is no surprise in her. There is never any surprise in her, not with the heavy things. Nor is there disquiet, despite the fact that he has just confirmed the fear she confessed to him when they spoke last. By the end, though, there is something cold in her eyes, something almost accusing. The rest of her is still schooled into place. In his hundreds of years, he has only ever met one other person who had such natural talent. The man was the best spy the Darkling had ever seen.

“I didn’t grow up as a person, not truly,” he tries again, allowing the smallest, barest hint of vulnerability into his voice. Any more, and he doubts he would appreciate her reaction, not the way she so skillfully reads subtlety. If he gave her more, she would see it as a shout. An insult, he thinks. “I grew up a title, a thing, a future mapped out long before I was born.” There it is again, that curious thing that passes behind her eyes when he talks about his past or his plans. It’s cool anger, but that makes no sense. “All I knew of other people was deference, servility, teachers, and enemies. I had no peers. I was kept alone, apart. All I was told of myself was that I was meant to stand above all others.”

Sympathy curls around her eyes, perhaps even pain. But it's disproportionate, too much for this story. Yet it doesn't look personal, either.

She reacts to the strangest things.

“How are you not a psychopath, then?” It’s as though she’s trying to call him out on a lie.

This smile is actually a little genuine. He gives a half shrug. “We act in accordance to our nature, I suppose.” She goes tight, but hides it very, very well. “I guessed you didn’t have many friends in the First Army,” he says. “I would also guess that those you did have were trusted, and close, and had been held for many years. You don’t trust easily, but once you do, you’re remarkably and unflinchingly loyal.” Protective, too. He says it all in the cadence of a guess, a question. It isn’t a guess, though, not this part.

The gentlest clench of her jaw, eased so the motion is slow and muted rather than sudden - and thus less likely to be seen - gives away the fact that she is perturbed. “. . .For the sake of argument we’ll say that’s more or less true, sure. The reality was more complicated than that.”

There is nothing uncomplicated about her.

He revels in it.

He nods as if he knows what she is talking about, though, and her expression is carefully, masterfully shrouded. “You’re remarkably insightful,” he says honestly. It is a statement, not a compliment. “You’re obviously intelligent. And,” he says, softening his voice, “you’re compassionate.”

Her brows raise in a sardonic manner, then a moment later her eyes narrow. “No,” she says. “No I think the word you’re looking for is empathetic. Compassion implies understanding _and_ sympathy.”

“You don’t have sympathy for Genya?”

That brings her up short.

“What do you know of her situation?” he presses.

“That it’s utter and complete shit,” she says, flat and unamused. “And that’s an awfully broad stroke to paint. All or none? Really?”

He looks at her, only looks at her - it is a technique he has come to rely on. It works in friendly conversation as well as it works in interrogation. Which is to say, almost unerringly.

It doesn’t take long before a sigh - annoyed for all intents and purposes - is pressing against the back of her throat and she is going on. This is part of the reason she is such a distraction. How long has it been since anyone was unafraid of him? Not as an act, not on the surface, but deep down, truly unafraid. Has there ever been anyone?

“You gave her to the Queen,” she says, the annoyed resignation in her voice, too, “either to curry favor or for her to act as a spy. That the King has a thing for beautiful young women who aren’t in a position to say no is well known, and I can’t believe for a second that wasn’t something you’d have taken into consideration first. That about sum it up?”

He drinks her in for a moment, unable to help himself. Then he nods, and repeats, with the smallest tug at one side of his mouth, “Remarkably intelligent. But it isn’t just that. You seem to have a gift for seeing through another person’s eyes. That’s a very useful skill to have, Alina. Which,” he says slowly, “I don’t believe I have to tell you. Nor do I have to point how rare it is.”

She looks like something is stuck in her throat, bitter and sour at the same time. She swallows audibly. “Glad you enjoyed the show. I’ll be happy to fill you in on what you missed when you tell me where you and Ivan started ‘overhearing.’”

Having the other man’s name come up suddenly is jarring in an odd way. He doesn’t like it.

He smiles. “As I said. You are a remarkable person.”

She gives an impressively scathing eye roll. Baghra would never lower herself to such a gesture, and no one else has been foolish enough to do it where he can see in. . . hundreds of years, he thinks. Something odd and foreign stirs behind his ribcage, tight and pulling. It is almost like nausea. He knows what it is, of course, and it is so old, so long disused, that it is little more than an echo. But it is still there.

He cants his head at her.

“It just. . . that really seems like an insult coming from you.”

He raises his brows. “How so?”

“Come on, you’re like a million years old, the definition of puissant,” (Really, where does a ‘nobody’ First Army soldier learn a word like that?) “and you could probably have ended the wars when you were ten if the jackass King” (She makes it so easy to like her sometimes) “would just get out of the way. You probably don’t play chess or cards because no one has posed a challenge since you were ten, either.”

He turns thoughtful, then turns the words back on her. “Suddenly I have the urge to try.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she says, managing bland and blunt at the same time. “I’m more likely to throw a chessboard out the window in frustration than have a proper game.”

“Do you know how to play?”

“No. Why are we talking about chess? Didn’t you say you came looking for me for a reason? Pretty epic, by the way, having the Darkling come looking for you.” He lets himself smile fully, and relishes the jolt she has to hide. “I suppose I assumed being summoned was the law of the land.”

“The law of the land seems to be changing. Didn’t you say so yourself? Besides, I was burning with curiosity to see the reason my Grisha all looked battered when I returned.” The simple truth is that he just doesn't like the stares. He's long since grown used to them, but that doesn't mean they're not still old.

She gives him a questioning look.

“I’ve been at the front.”

Understanding floods her eyes, but she blinks it away. Behind it there is something like. . .hurt. And regret. Strange.

“Welcome back. To answer your questions, no, I didn’t say that, and. . . the law only seems to be changing when completely unnecessary.”

“You haven’t told me if you liked the chair.”

“And you haven’t told me what it means.”

He lays against her a long, studying look. He brings his attention to a needle point and focuses it on her. The flush of her skin, the pulse barely visible at her neck because of how she’s turned. The muscles around her eyes and mouth, the ones not even he has complete control over. “I should think it was obvious,” he says.

She doesn’t hide the clench of her jaw this time. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What, ‘You’re meant to be my equal, in time?’ Or even better, let me guess, your sense of balance or something.”

Despite the fact that her tone is scathing, her words send sparking fire through his chest. How does she do this? How does she know what he wants to say? How does she know the thoughts he buries?

“. . .Would that be so bad?” He asks, his tone unmasked, unaltered.

She is taken aback as if no part of her had expected anything but denial from him. It’s unusually satisfying, causing her guard to stumble like this. What she is not is surprised. Not nervous, not unsettled, even at having her guess all but confirmed. Power sits in her like it is her natural state. He is not surprised she takes in its presence so cleanly and with such ease. It suits her, ass if she were made for it.

Her jaw works in twitches, like she is chewing on words before she lets them out. “. . .How treasonous would it be to say that every time you won’t answer a goddamned question, I kind of want to stab you in the face? Figuratively speaking.”

He smiles broadly, and she cannot hide the spike of her pulse or the way her pupils grow. “That depends.”

She doesn’t play along, she doesn’t ask, _On what?_ She circles back to another junction in the conversation. “The chair is rushing it. Especially with no warning, no word, no explanation.” She pauses, thoughtful. “No, what that is is high-handed, which is,” she casts her eyes to one side, “one of my very least favorite things in the world.” Ah, it’s to take the edge off the words. “Even if it wasn’t that, a person likes context, DL.”

Again, his brows go up, further than before.

The tendons in her neck go taut. She covers it by taking a long inhale. That she was looked over for so many years in the First Army, with an innate ability like hers, speaks only to the need for it to be gutted and remade. He feels the old itch, the scratching need to get it done. But it is patience and time that will see everything finally as it should be. (It is not just power, but patience and time that he holds over all men.) Especially now that she is sitting in front of him. The answer to his every need.

“I don’t have a first name to call you by,” she says, “so a ridiculous and preposterous pet name is your punishment.”

This smile shows his teeth, and her pulse surges again. “What would happen if I wanted to join you for a meal?” he asks, going back to the chair.

She follows effortlessly. “You’d have me summoned away from the peons like you did last time. Then again, I could always just sit on your knee.” Her smile is scathingly sarcastic.

So much deflecting. And misdirection. It’s the same thing he does, but it’s so much more. . . raw. Untamed and unrefined. He does it by pulling back and then pressing when there is an opening. She reaches out and preempts by seeking to throw you off balance. He has no difficulty believing it has always worked for her. A sloppy cut is still a cut, especially when you have a blade as large as she does.

He doesn’t indulge her with a reaction, and waits to see how she’ll handle it. “What did you do when you weren’t working? In the First Army.”

She shrugs, seeming not the least bit bothered that he didn’t take the bait, or by the abrupt subject change. It is. . . interesting.  _She_ is interesting. “Ate like a bird, slept terribly, looked in at the lives of others from the outside, punched people in the face more than was probably healthy. I was buddies with my apprentice, Mal and I never really talked anymore, and I had no women friends. They only said hello when they wanted a way to get to Mal. He’s Grisha-level attractive,” she explains, then drily adds in a mutter, “Man must have every transmittable disease known to humankind.”

This boy caused her power to lash out so strongly - he has heard of nothing like it since Baghra’s own childhood. His abduction by the volcra would have to have called out overpowering emotions in her, but she speaks of him so coldly. The Darkling would assume it was bitterness, but there is nothing in her that says she believed herself in love with him. Perhaps the reports about what happened were wrong.

“What about love, then?” He asks evenly.

One of her brows pulls upward, and he sees more layers to it than there should be. “. . .I suppose overly personal is as overly personal does,” she allows. With a shrug, she says, “In answer, you did see me when I walked into your pavillion, right? Not exactly shark bait.”

There's that odd way of speaking. He has the acute urge to learn what made her the way she is. What influences, what events. She is so different.

“What did you study when you grew up?” he asks.

That same brow climbs. “Are we back to pretending you didn’t have a detailed dossier and history on me and everyone I’ve ever passed on the street waiting for you when we got back here?”

“Perhaps I’d like to hear it from your perspective. Alternatively, you may have an overinflated sense of importance.”

She gives a snort, but it is an amused sound, and appreciative. She likes it when he jokes. “He says to the woman he’s put in his color and given a chair to that denotes equal standing before she’s been here a month. What’s with all the questions?”

“You wanted to get to know one another.”

She gives him a floridly unamused look. “If you’re going to lie to me, lie better,” she says, blunt and flat. (It takes a moment before he sees how bothered she is by the idea, but he sees it in a way that has him wondering if it’s a feeling she’s aware of.)

This is the second sincere smile she has pulled from him tonight, and this one envelops his eyes. For an instant he feels almost. . . younger. “You really are not afraid of me.”

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. Didn’t we have this conversation before?”

“Your memory is spectacular.”

He guesses she is holding back a rude gesture.

“I’d like to know why,” he clarifies.

“Whyyy….?”

He indulges her: “Why I don’t frighten you.”

“There’s that weird sense of repetition again.”

Abruptly he feels a flicker of annoyance at her armor. It is as distant as a star in the night’s sky - he is long past such things - but it is there. And it gives him an idea, one that would have a much younger him smiling.

“I know the reasons you gave,” he says, affecting patience. “But I think there’s more to it than that.”

She gets the strangest look on her face, and doesn’t so much as blink as she looks him in the eye. It’s something most people can’t do for more than a moment. Eventually, she reaches for something deep inside of herself and answers, quietly. “. . .Why would you hurt what was yours?”

It’s rare that anyone surprises him enough for anything to show on his face without his permission. It’s more rare than anything makes him feel actual shock.

She backpedals immediately. “Darkling,” she says. “Sun Summoner. Black robes, talk of partnership. Plus I have this funny feeling that in secret, you’re into poetic destiny. Also regular destiny. And you did give me the,” she does a poor job at lowering the pitch of her voice, “‘there are no others like us and there never will be’ speech, didn’t you? I mean. . .” She is rambling. Broadcasting again. “I didn’t mean to make it sound. . . .”

“Overly personal?” He supplies. His mind is a thousand thousand places, a firework sparked by seven words.

“Overly personal.” She looks down at her book fixedly, but her throat goes tight with the need to swallow. His estimation grows still further.

“Still, that’s a strange way to put it,” he says quietly.

“You know me. I pop off at the mouth without thinking, it’s kind of my thing. And the number one trait you would have picked for your partner in crime, I bet. You’re so very welcome for that.”

“. . .Alina,” he says, silk weaving through the sound.

“Hm?” She asks with false lightness.

“Look at me.” He learned a disdain for the word “please” from Baghra. _You don’t ask permission. You know what’s yours, and you keep it close, keep it safe. “Please” is for lesser men._

Alina takes her time, and her eyes wander like a child who fears facing an angry parent. It makes him feel a sliver of ice. She isn’t afraid of him, no. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t disgusted by him. It’s a common reaction. Then again, disgust was not why she responded so violently when he reached out that night in his chambers.

He extends a hand. It is soft, passive. She looks at it as if it has sprung detached from nothingness. It isn’t horror there, and it certainly isn’t disgust. The closest thing it matches is fear, but it isn’t the _right_ kind of fear, not any kind he would expect.

Unless. . . .

It has been so long since anyone posed any kind of puzzle.

“Your letter said you found our touch overwhelming,” he explains. His tone goes wry. “There is a way to fix that, and I’d recommend sooner rather than later.”

Her eyes dart up to him, and again she has that look, as if she knows something. She is an utter natural. He thinks of telling her of the stag, using it to press his point, but not just yet. Best to save that for another night.

“It’s just a hand, Alina. It isn’t going to bite.” He sounds amused. Taunting. She will be the type to respond to any challenge issued the right way.

“. . .You might be surprised,” she mutters, but she is reaching out. She looks as if she’s reaching toward a coiled snake, expecting at any moment that it will strike if she makes a wrong move. She pauses not an inch away, clearly steeling herself.

The moment her fingertips graze his skin, he feels a spark shoot from them and up his arm. She goes rigid, sucks in a breath. It comes out trembling as her eyes squeeze shut. She looks like she is suffering. In pain. He has seen this reaction before. And pain and pleasure are so often indistinguishable at their peaks.

She crumples in on herself, folding. Tremors shake her, and breath is pulled from her lungs in trembling gusts. But she doesn’t recoil, not this time. She doesn’t back down. It is a force of will, he can tell, but she slips her hand further into his until she can wrap her fingers around it and clamp down. His fingers close around her hand as he watches her, rapt.

She tightens her fingers as if holding on to keep from falling from a mountain.

He has asked what it feels like to touch him, and he has read dozens of accounts, but it is a sensation forever denied him. The experience varies with each person who tries to convey it. It is a calling, a promise, a summoning up of the well of a Grisha’s power, often in a way they have never felt. For some it is calming, for others it bestows a sense of confidence, certainty, rightness, joy. Power. But at its heart, it has been something that defies words. The mechanics are easily enough explained, but what it truly is must be reduced to poetry to come close.

He pulls her up gently to stand, putting a hand on her other arm to balance her, and there is that shock again, that jolt up the same pathway through his arm and into his chest. Her eyes are still tightly closed. There is a deep furrow between her brows, but she is regaining control of herself. He is preoccupied, though, because the look of fear on her is intensifying the more she holds his hand. The more she calms. And it _is_ fear, nearly terror, and confusion and denial. He can feel it. Her breathing goes fast and shallow.

She surprises him by opening her eyes. They seek his immediately, and when they find them, her pupils are wide. The look in them, soft, open, almost pliant. . . there is a question there. No, not a question. A plea? And for a moment, the fear vanishes completely.

Something in his chest clenches, and without his permission, he feels a look of confusion on his face. He twists it expertly into a crooked smile. “Well?”

He doesn’t like soft and pliant. But that is not what she is, not truly. In this moment, what she is is _open._

She doesn’t answer. She just looks at him. She looks at him, stark and bald, like she knows exactly what caught him off guard, exactly what he is still schooling into order and that it upsets him, like she can see the rise in his pulse under his skin. He thinks for the first time he is seeing the real her. A word comes to mind, and it is a word he does not allow himself to think.

Their hands are still joined. She feels a tight sense of certainty, of rightness.

His smile drops away.

Then _she_ looks confused.

Something in his eyes goes tight, and there is that twist in his chest again.

He doesn’t decide to, but he leans in and kisses her.

If the touch of her hand had been like a jolt - a bite, despite what he had said - this is cold fire and burning ice.

She sucks in a surprised breath, and he pulls back before she has a chance to. Her eyes are nearly round, a deep furrow between her brows where they are pulled down. He tilts his head just a fraction of an inch, and considers leaning in for another - he _wants_ to - but best not to press now. Not with her. It is so often the right decision to simply plant the seed and leave it alone to germinate. Push too much, and you only pull it out of the soil.

Her lips are parted. She doesn’t seem to notice when he slips his hand out of hers.

He realizes his other hand is clenched into a tight fist forces it to relax.

He allows himself a small smile, benign and polite, as he retakes his seat and says, with a nod to her small pile of books and pages of notes, “Your lessons are obviously progressing well. How are your powers coming along?”

She gapes at him. The starts of words come from her mouth, but she cuts them off over and again. She holds up a finger and puts herself together with a visible force of will. “What _exactly_ do you mean when you say you want me to be your equal some day? Because this-- There--” She squeezes her lips shut and they press into thin lines of rich pink.

“I didn’t say that, technically. You did. Should I apologize?” He asks lightly.

“You-- W--” She sputters angrily, then stops again and presses her eyes tightly shut. She is either struggling with the urge to lash out, or trying to solve some sort of complex equation in her head. The latter, he thinks. She is calculating something and failing to make it tally.

He remembers her face coloring more than this on their journey here. She must have had Genya adjust it along with the other, more minor changes. Darker lashes and lips, more angles to her face. All subtle. They make her look older. Untouchable and commanding. He assumed that was the point.

Her fists clench into tight balls, and she turns her back on him. No one has dared do that in hundreds of years, either. She raises a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose and takes several deep, calming breaths. Finally, she turns around.

“Don’t do that again,” she says tightly. And oh, she means it. But she resumes her seat. Her posture is barred off - feet up on the chair, pressing her knees against her chest, arms folded tightly - but she hasn’t stormed out, and she’s facing him, her back against the soft armrest.

She didn’t hate it. She is angry about it - very angry - but not because she didn’t enjoy it. He has the odd urge to smile.

“Your training?” he prompts. It’s an innocuous question. Polite and innocent. But he sees her understand immediately that it is _not_ polite and innocent. It is pointed.

She plays along, dismissing the kiss with as much seeming ease as he has, though she is markedly more peevish. He wants to smile again.

Or perhaps she doesn’t play along. Because what she says, bluntly, is “I want the Fabrikators to start combat training with everyone else.”

He takes a moment to decide if he wants to answer or press the point.

“It was a simple question,” he says.

“I’m sorry, I thought not answering them was how it was done here. And I so wanted to blend in,” she says flatly. But she looks away.

“An answer for an answer, then.”

“You first.” There is a snap under her voice. Her utter and complete lack of fear. . . . The woman is magnificent. And foolish.

A twitch of his lips. “Why? Should they start training,” he clarifies.

She wants to say something, but he sees her bite it back. She says, “They’re the easiest to catch.” Something in him stills. “Their powers aren’t combat oriented and they don’t receive any hand-to-hand training, so they’re the easiest for hunters to catch out in the world. They could use a confidence boost, too - importance here puts too much emphasis on combat prowess. Like everywhere else. We’re at war, I get that, but minds need to be valued, too.” _More,_ he wonders if she is saying. “I could also make an argument that a healthy body supports a healthy mind, and no one who’s stagnant or sedentary is going to come up with any brilliant innovations.” She pauses. “Except David. But that’s David. He’s an outlier.”

He considers her, and she holds his gaze without flinching.

“I’ll have Botkin informed.”

She is almost successful at hiding her surprise. And something, either his answer or her reaction, unsettles her.

“Your turn, Alina.” Again he weaves silk through the word. This time it annoys her. Acutely.

“It’s going about as well as can be expected. Right now at least half of it is nothing more than meditating.” She wants to say something more, but holds it back. Is she trying to protect Baghra, he wonders? Speaking to her shifts to the top of his list of priorities.

“How many times a week are you seeing Baghra?”

She gives him a flat look. “Really? You’re playing stupid. You.”

“I thought that was what we were doing.”

“That’s what _you_ were doing. I was being polite and playing along.” Her tone has gone arch.

“Much as it will surprise you, I didn’t get a progress report on you when I got back.” And oh, it does surprise her. “I came to you to ask.”

She gives him an odd look. Like he’s said something inscrutable. “Why?”

He only smiles, a small, knowing thing. A kind thing.

He can practically hear her walls slam into place.

“Why not?” he asks.

Normally, such scathing suspicion is reserved for enemy generals and special prisoners. Then again, she is not especially normal.

He looks at her, considering. “You have a strange way of making friends.”

She bites her tongue with visible effort. So he just says, “I’ll assume you haven’t been to see her, then. Why?”

After another moment eyeing him, she shrugs petulantly. “When I left the day we met, I told her, ‘if you still want to train me, let me know.’ She hasn’t. She never said she wouldn’t, or even that she didn’t want to. I’m just not going to beat down her door. Not when there’s so much I can do on my own.”

He taps a thumb on the arm of the chair. “That’s going well, then?” He doesn’t hide his ire, such as it is.

“Well,” she agrees stubbornly. Her voice is all starch and steel and thorns, and there is that anger again.

He softens his tone. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

A scoff takes her face. “Because I’m not two.” She is scathing. “I don’t need to run to daddy when I skin my knee. There are other teachers I can ask if I have questions, and to be honest, I assumed you knew from minute one.” She pauses and adds drily, “I generally assume you know everything.”

He doesn’t say anything right away, so she goes on. “I didn’t see it as much of an issue.” As is normal for her, she’s calmer now that she has vented her heat up front. “What you want me to do isn’t going to come down to technique.” (She’s hiding something.) “It’s going to come down to raw power. My ability may be legendary, but the well of power I pull from isn’t. I’m just a Grisha.” _Oh, you really aren’t._ “Maybe stronger than average, I don’t know. Maybe weaker. You being who you are, I assumed you had a contingency plan for that, so I’ve been working on making the most of what I have.”

He cants his head, thoughtful.

She narrows her eyes. “Is this something you do around everyone, or just me?”

“What?”

“This whole,” she waves a hand at him vaguely, “inappropriately long unbroken eye contact thing.”

He smiles, a little. “Not outside of interrogations, no.”

“Yay.” she says drily.

“Normally no one looks back this long, so it’s not generally an issue.”

She does, though, almost always. And this time, it’s intentional. After a moment, he sees something shift behind her eyes, and start to move. It is probing, examining, like she’s trying to pry something from him. It is also soft, and speculative. And sad. She looks through him as if she knows him. That confused expression comes back, and suddenly she snaps her eyes away from his.

He would give nearly anything to know what she saw.

. . .This woman is dangerous. His infatuation with her is dangerous.

“I’ll speak with her,” he says after a pause. His voice is quieted and lowered.

“As you like,” she says over a sharp inhale. “It’s your house.” She pauses, and her brow furrows. “Mostly? I’ll be honest, I’m having kind of an out-of-body experience over the whole thing right now.” She stares unseeing at her fingers where they rest on her knees.

For a moment, just an instant, he entertains the thought that it’s because of the kiss. But if it is, it’s intentional. She is too self-possessed to let him see something so obvious unless she chooses to. All it does is pique his interest.

“How long was the priest here?” he asks.

She makes a disgusted noise. “Too long. But five seconds would be too long around him, as far as I’m concerned. Man’s creepy. And gross.”

“And yet he seems so fond of you.”

She snaps her eyes up to his and is speechless - for all of four seconds. “Was that a _joke?”_ She asks, incredulous. “You _joke?_ That’s two now! Oh god, no one tell our enemies, the Darkling’s gone soft.” She is grinning by the end. It’s infectious.

The moment stretches, but eventually, he sobers. “What did you talk about, Alina? With Baghra. Why were you there so long?”

She shrugs a shoulder and looks away. “Possibilities. The future, the past. The shape of the world, the risks of what I am.”

“Risks?”

She pauses, then plucks the black of her kefta away from her upper chest as if to say _This._ “And I know you’re. . . .” A longer pause, this time. She looks up at him again. “You’re more than you say you are. There’s something else. . . .” she shakes her head, then shrugs a shoulder blithely. “We both know you’re just going to go ask her yourself, anyway.”

No one has ever read him so well, except Baghra, when he was younger. She can still read him better than anyone else, but he expects it. Alina is starting to make him feel. . . she’s starting to make him _feel._ He is tempted to stop asking who she is, and start asking what. Sometimes he can't help but think she was made for him, made to fit all the hollows he has so closely guarded.

She puts her book onto the table, still open to the same page, then rises and takes a moment to stretch. He wants to believe it is for his benefit. Either way, he takes her in as she does it.

She walks toward the hall, leaving her pile of material behind. “Thanks for the visit, DL,” she says coolly, “and sleep well when you get there.” After the briefest of pauses, she adds, wry, “Let me know if you want me to sit on your knee some time.”

 _And don’t ever kiss me again._ He’s not sure why, but he can practically hear the words in the air.

 

* * * * *

 

It is an _itch_ to leave the _Istorii_ sitting out on the table in the library, but taking it with me would have put a target on it, no matter how small. And I wasn’t going to take the time to gather the whole stack to bring with me, and probably drop one on the way out for my trouble. I’ll just have to sneak back later tonight, clean up, and take it. That way if, on the one in a million chance he goes back to the library soon, he won't see just one book missing from my mess. He'll just assume everything has been put away.

If I am half afraid of walking any deserted hallway or space for a while after the Apparat’s appearance, I can hardly be blamed.

I find myself wishing acutely for the first time that Fedyor had wanted to stay. It’s a lot easier than thinking about literally anything else after that.

. . .He hadn’t been angry when he’d kissed me. He hadn't been angry, and it had happened much, much sooner than it should have.

So much for my fear that I couldn't change anything.

I'm too keyed up to enjoy the victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone axed me in the comments about DL’s reaction to Alina’s note: 
> 
>    
> It's annoying because he thinks SO MUCH guh
> 
>  _Sorry I yelled at you like a crazy person last night. Long, boring story._  
>  *files away to find out later*
> 
>  _On a related note, that ‘human amplifier’ thing? Packs quite a punch. I thought my spine was going to snap when Baghra grabbed me yesterday._  
>  *ah, is that what it was*
> 
>  _Since I’m here, do something nice for yourself today._  
>  *arches brow*  
>  _Have a piece of pie with lunch, get a massage, skip a meeting with someone you’d rather punch in the throat than look at, whatever. Treat yourself._  
>  *......*  
> *.............*
> 
>  _You put me in black (P.S. you don’t pay Genya enough) (P.P.S. regretting it yet? :D),_  
>  *god she's squirrely*  
>  _welcome to consequences. You’re so young and obviously carefree, I figured you’d appreciate having it pointed out._  
>  *and she seriously overcompensates when she's nervous. Mental note to have her work on that*
> 
>  _. . .I am aware I’d be in a dungeon now if my fingers didn’t glow._  
>  *see? seriously, jesus*
> 
> _I can be bossy, I guess?_
> 
>  _I’d apologize for that too, but it would be a lie._  
>  *doesn't understand how she's confounding people, she's transparent as clear glass. She obviously cares too much what other people think. But only some people? Guh SHE'S SUCH A CONTRADICTION, head spins off into a hundred different ways this could be some kind of ploy*
> 
>    
> So basically her note did the opposite of what she wanted it to do. Because Darkling.
> 
> \- - - - -


	12. We Have Work to Do

If I ask for something once, I keep getting it. Eggs and fruit for breakfast. Water to wash off with after training. I’m relieved I don’t have to ask to get a new set of fresh underclothes delivered every morning.

Genya took my mention of skincare running, and I now have a collection of little bottles filled with different oils and mixtures and scrubs on a polished tray that’s inscribed with the Darkling’s symbol. I don’t actually know what most of them are for, but they smell nice, so I take to dabbing some at the base of my throat while I read and take notes at the end of the day.

After my first attempt at using kohl, she literally confiscates every cosmetic in my rooms and insists she _wants_ to do it for me, really she does. So every few days, she tints my lips a little and darkens my lashes. As I start to fill out, she darkens the skin under my cheekbones so they look more sharp. “Regal and commanding,” she says. “So no one will fuck with you without thinking twice,” I hear.

I’m tempted to ask her to turn my hair and eyes gold, really lean into the Sun Summoner Schtick. But since it would have to be touched up every few days and we’re hardly attached at the hip... well, turning some key features up in a subtle way is one thing. If those disappear for a few days, people will just assume I’m tired. But the gold? If I were to get caught with those pants down at some point, there really wouldn’t be any way to explain without coming off either insecure or egocentric. No one would really buy “I thought it would be pretty.” Even though it would totally be pretty.

 

* * * * *

 

I decide that maintaining a glow at all times will be good exercise. If my power is my lungs and heart, then I shouldn’t have to concentrate to use it. It should just always be there.

For ease and practicality, I just make myself a new little friend in the form of a glowing ball of gold light, only moderately diffuse at the edges. It’s the most natural color for me, and I believe in measured progress. He - it’s a he, apparently - sits to my right, behind and up from my shoulder. Just enough that the glare doesn’t bother me. It’s gentle and soft (for the sake of others), but if I had to see it all the time… well, even married people don’t want 24/7 contact.

I name him Edward.

Edward gets too much attention. Fortunately, I’m already practiced in ignoring attention.

It’s fun most of the time.

At first.

Then I keep realizing he has winked out when I get lost in a book or am concentrating in combat training or follow a thought too deeply. So it isn’t long before “fun” turns into “I want to pitch you into the lake, you little mother fucker.”

And this is why I started with the easy color.

 

* * * * *

 

Days quickly develop into a routine, as they tend to. I stay up far too late and wake far too early. I want to do more, but just as Alina’s body is voracious, it can’t get enough sleep, either. Between the way I’m filling out and the muscle I’m adding, my clothing is adjusted every week now. I probably wouldn’t notice, but I have apparently picked up an aesthetician and style consultant as a companion. I don’t begrudge her attention to it. I’m not just another body in a regular kefta; it matters if I look sloppy. I’m not just Alina, I’m not just the Sun Summoner. I’m the office represented by the color I wear.

The Darkling comes and goes without a word. I often don’t even know he’s left unless I see him re-entering with a retinue queued up and handing him paperwork.

I imagine one of these times I'm supposed to beat down his door, all flustered and demanding to know why he kissed me and is now ignoring me. I don't bother to entertain the thought that he listened when I told him not to do it again. Instead, I just pretend it never happened. It's hard to lose when you refuse to play the game.

I never attend fewer than two classes every day with Botkin, usually with the younger students. More when I can manage it, especially the combat training. There are enough Grisha in training that it isn’t hard. Often, I’ll sit in the back while he works with the youngest children, teaching them basic defense and theory while half my attention is on a book. It’s easy enough to shift my attention when I need to, and even when I don’t, I invariably end up soaking something or another up.

Books have become my air and water. Aside from combat training, I’m not in class with the others - thank every God that ever was - but instead have tutors, and mostly all they do is assign me reading and show up every day to answer any questions. Sometimes they quiz me on things. It isn’t unusual that their “quick” meetings with me end up filling hours. I read whenever I eat, and I eat twice what anyone else does, at least. I read while I bathe, while I walk from place to place. I fall asleep over a book at my desk most nights.

 

* * * * *

 

I have no idea how they handle menstruation here. I discreetly mention to one of the maids that it’s my “time,” and she returns with rags. Glorified rags and this sort of waist-crotch harness business that they’re supposed to go into, presumably so you don’t lose them down a pant leg. It takes me over ten minutes to figure out the fucking thing.

Perhaps now I know why no one wears just the one set of clothing. This is really just asking for it. And I have yet to see any of the Grisha women conspicuously absent from Botkin’s classes for a week or so. They are braven men than I.

 

* * * * *

 

I find myself spending most of my free time at the stables. The horses are good company, and at the right times of day, the buildings are utterly deserted. The place is massive, they must house hundreds of horses in various stables on the Little Palace grounds.

When I find the Darkling’s horse, though, I don’t wander nearly as much. It’s ridiculous of course, but being around him feels a little bit like being able to cheat and be around the Darkling without any walls up. His or mine.

I know my fun is going to be ruined once someone figures out this is where I can always be found when I’ve disappeared, but I’ll enjoy it for now. That’s the secret to a life of sanity and even mild satisfaction, I think.

 

* * * * *

 

I see Ivan more than I feel is strictly necessary. But in every instance, at least one of us is ignoring the other - it’s a system that seems to work.

One day, though, once we’ve passed one another on the grounds, I remember something and give a little whistle to get his attention.

“I’m busy,” he says, curt. “What do you want?”

“Lovely to see you too, you gleaming ray of sunshine.” I make myself sound like a doting aunt who wants to pinch his cheeks. When that muscle in his jaw twitches, I know I’ve struck his temper and can move on, satisfied. I don’t hide the laugh in my voice. “Do I need anything special to use the library at the Grand Palace? What with the black dress and all.” He scowls. “Also, where is the library at the Grand Palace?”

“You don’t leave the Little Palace grounds without a guard, first of all. And second, we have everything you need here. Have you _seen_ the library?” He asks in a honeyed jab.

“Big room, glass ceiling, lots of books? Books, those things I’m literally never seen without? No. Never even heard of the place.” I give him a look. “It does have everything I need, if all I was interested in was stuff pertaining to Grisha, the Small Science, the Second Army, and the history of Grisha, the Small Science, and the Second Army. Shocking though it may be to you, topics of interest exist outside those areas.”

He starts to walk away. “You have plenty of studying to do here.”

I narrow my eyes at his back. “Try me.”

He stops. He turns halfway ‘round, following the swivel of his head.

“When was the formation of the Second Army?” That sneer, that arrogant, cocky sneer is there.

I feel like it should piss me off. It doesn’t. It does make me want to shut him up, though, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I may or may not be annoyed about _how_ I’d sometimes like to shut him up.

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

I scoff. “Please.” I give him the official date, then, “But it started unofficially four years prior, likely long after the idea was planted and undocumented cells that would lead to the Second Army started helping out in border attacks. The battle of Two Peaks,” I drone as if reciting a memorized line - which I am, “which would have been a debilitating blow to Ravka and was entirely saved by the first Darkling’s organized Grisha was what gave the last push to declare it formed. Now try something less insulting,” I finish, snide.

Challenge accepted. I see it in his eyes and the way he turns his body square to face me.

“What’s the name of the fourth vertebrae down from the skull?”

“C4,” I reply immediately, “so called because it’s part of the cervical curve, or the group of cervical vertebrae, which number from C1 at the base of the skull down to C7.” The way his eyes widen is massively satisfying. But oh, my ass is not done. I go on to list each section of the spine and the names of the individual bones in descending order, ending with the: “Coccyx, made up of four fused vertebrae and commonly known as the tailbone,” My pronunciation of the word pops a little. “I think coccyx is a hilarious word, by the way.”

I know the look he’s giving me. ‘You’ve been here for weeks, how do you already know that?’

Actually I already had a good grasp of anatomy. I don’t feel he needs to know that.

I counter with, “What’s the approximate amplitude and wavelength of the color you’re wearing?”

He looks down at his kefta, then back up at me, brow creasing.

“Ok, how about the temperature required for blue flame? I totally get a point for that, by the way.”

“Three thousand degrees,” he replies snidely.

I give him an approving look. I can’t help it. He’s not all muscle. I also can’t help adding to his answer. “Twenty-six hundred to three thousand, technically. And bonus points if you would have said you can also get it by adding copper chloride to a regular flame.”

He stands up to his full height and tilts his chin back, unmasked challenge in his eyes. Ah, so now we’re _really_ competing. I grin back at him, lopsided, in open invitation.

Bring it, big man.

“What is the precise amount of pressure the heart of a healthy adult male can tolerate before it literally bursts _and,_ how long can it be held just below that without probable permanent damage?”

My grin falters.

“...I don’t know,” I admit churlishly. “But I have only been here like seven weeks, so credit where it’s due. Then again, I’ve been here for almost two months - how much have you learned about what _I_ can do?” I walk forward until I have to angle my neck back to meet his eyes. “Do you know what _tiny_ percentage of the light spectrum we can even see, Ivan? How much of _my_ work goes on in realms unknown to anyone else? How much belongs to places no one but me will ever or can ever know?”

We stare at one another, neither willing to back down, until abruptly I feel something between us shift. It isn’t that it becomes less heated. It’s that it becomes a different kind of heat, and I am so unprepared for it that it hits me in the sternum like a boulder.

Worse, he feels it, too.

I snap my eyes away and step back. “I’ll see to the library myself. Once I know what’s there I can just have books brought.” I turn and walk away.

“Alina.”

My body goes stiff as ice and I stop, but I don’t turn around. If nothing else, I don’t want him to see the look on my face; he’s never said my name before.

“What are you looking for over there? What is it you want to know?”

I could answer him. World history. Politics and cultures in other countries. Rules and customs I don’t know, but would if I'd been born here. How _other_ people do things.

But the guy is kind of a dick.

“...Everything, Ivan.” I say. “I want to know everything.”

He doesn’t stop me walking away this time.

At least now I know where I’ll get my first real-world experience practicing invisibility in a stressful situation. Because I am totally sneaking over there, and I refuse to see the look that’ll be on his face if I get caught.

 

* * * * *

 

The grounds are deserted at this hour. It used to be one of his favorite times to be out. But then, he used to see people as something to get away from now and again. He used to see them as much of anything at all.

He excuses his guard at the head of the trail and walks in alone. When he gets to the little stone hut, he raps a knuckle against the door once, and only once, before letting himself in. It’s a courtesy.

She doesn’t look up, but she does say, “He deigns to come down from his tower.” She’s reading, as she often is.

“A pleasure to see you too, as always,” he replies. Insincerely.

“Hmph.”

He gets to the point immediately. There’s been no other way between them for a very long time. “Why aren’t you training her?”

Her eyes are pitiless and disapproving. “She hasn’t come, has she.”

“This is too important for one of your tantrums, old woman. You know how long I’ve been waiting for her.”

“Oh, I know more than you think, boy.”

“So you’re fond of telling me. What did you talk about?”

“How long do you have? Or would you like to be more specific?”

She has grown into every bit the churlish, petulant child he never was. He wonders sometimes how long it will be before she tires of it and begins another game instead.

“She was here all day,” he says. “Why?”

She laughs, a breathy thing, and says again, “How long do you have?”

That muscle in his jaw takes a leap, the one that seems exclusively reserved for this sweltering hut.

“She might have a brain in her head,” Baghra says, and she sounds almost thoughtful. She closes the book, sets it aside, and looks up at him with shrewd eyes, every bit as clear and bright as they have been as long as he can remember. “My condolences.”

He purses his lips. It would be the equivalent of a mortal throwing something into a wall.

“She may be able to teach you something I never could,” she muses.

It’s his turn to laugh. “I learned everything you ever taught me.”

“Now we both know that’s not true,” she says. Her tone is light - for her - but the darkness underneath is apparent.

He closes his eyes, already knowing he’s going to regret this. “Fine, Baghra. What is it she can teach me?”

“I said might, boy,” she snaps. “You’re as stubborn and prideful as you ever were. This one, though….” Her eyes go long distant. He waits - and there’s that muscle again - while she goes wherever is is she needs to.

She finally breaks herself out of it with one of her disdainful noises. They have become a language unto themselves. And then she does something that makes him go very, very still. She looks up at him and her lips twitch in the direction of an actual smile.

“You didn’t listen when I told you not to tamper with magic. Even your great mistake didn’t teach you to leave it alone. And now you want to repeat it. Still. You think it will go differently this time because it takes the shape of that little girl. I imagine you think you’ve already got her wrapped around your fingers, eh?” She laughs derisively.

She’s obviously not going to answer, so he just repeats the question: “Why was she here so long?”

“She had a lot to say,” she says, apparently annoyed just by the memory. “She’s a talker, that one,” she adds with obvious distaste. “But she has some interesting ideas. Especially about you.”

 _Jump_ goes the muscle. It’s facing away from her, though. “Such as?” The patience is wearing from his tone.

“Ask her yourself,” she snaps. “...Or have you? Did she not fall over herself to give you everything you want like all the others?” Her tone is mocking.

No, in fact, she hadn’t. She didn’t. She isn’t _like_ any of the others. She may not be like anyone he has ever met, and the thought is dissonant at the same time it’s exciting. No, interesting. He hasn’t felt excitement in a very long time. But then, he hasn’t felt most things in a very long time.

Oddly, his mind strays to the kiss. The brief feel of her lips, her hand gripping his, the look in her eyes, almost like she was lost. The way his power had seemed to bother her more the longer she felt it. The confusion on her face as he’d pulled back.

None of that shows on him, but the old woman sees something, anyway. He waited too long to answer. He turns it into a choice by smoothly changing the subject, softening his tone and leaning a shoulder against the door frame. He crosses his arms and one foot over the other. “What do you think of her?”

Her answer is immediate. “She’s flippant, arrogant, scared, and nearly as amoral as you are. The world is as good as doomed.”

“What else?”

She sighs, somewhere between annoyed and resigned. “She wants to do the right thing. She’s just not sure what it is. But of course, you’ll be more than happy to make up her mind for her,” she sneers. “She’s more grounded than you are, and less ambitious.” She turns away. “Which is something, at least.”

There’s something in her face, so he asks it again: “What else?”

“Hmph.”

“You know this is probably the last chance you have to influence how any of this goes.”

“Don’t think you can lie to me, boy,” she says, a dangerous, quiet snap in her voice.

“Then tell me what I need to know. For once.”

The secret behind her eyes shifts. “You’ve been waiting for her,” she says, shrewd. “For your Sun Summoner.”

Is this what she has secreted away? “You know I have,” he says.

She peers at him, that same knowing look he’d relied on and worshiped as a boy. Like she had all the secrets in the world, just waiting to spill from her lips and into him. “But not just so you can finish what you started when you doomed this country in the name of saving it. When you blighted the land. Just like you’ll do again.”

He stills, and she nods like he just confirmed something. But there is no way she can know this. It is the one thing he always kept from her, even as a boy.

...Unless Alina has already figured it out. He wants to deny even the possibility, but she has a gift for picking up on things that borders on the supernatural.

She had said, _Why would you hurt what was yours?_

 _Darkling,_ _Sun Summoner. Black robes, talk of partnership. Plus I have this funny feeling that in secret, you’re into poetic destiny._

And he had kissed her.

But she’s the type to hold secrets close to her chest, especially those of others. If she had a religion, privacy would be one of its tenets. Why would she have shared a thought so personal, never mind to a stranger, and one she knew she would see again? One who presented even the smallest chance of having it get back to him?

Unless she wanted precisely that. But even if she did, why would the old woman play along?

In this moment, he would give almost anything to know what happened in here the day Alina had come. He’ll have to settle for passing some questions on to Genya.

Baghra continues, dismissive and flippant. “Well, if you’ve been waiting for your match, you may actually have found it. If such a thing is possible. She’s a child, a babe. And you, boy, may just finally find out to be careful what you wish for.”

A line appears between his brows. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She barks a laugh. “You know everything, you tell me!” she says it as if it’s hilarious.

_Jumpjumpjump._

“...The trackers are closing in on the stag,” he lies. “You’ll start training her tomorrow. She’s going to need it.” He turns and leaves.

Her words bleed easily through the door as he closes it. “They can’t find something that doesn’t exist, boy!”

The thought he can’t escape as he makes his way back to the Palace is Baghra’s tacit endorsement of Alina as a sort of partner to him. She doesn’t believe it, of course, but the reasons for her bothering to say it at all….

He has more to think about tonight than he has in a long while.

And even now, even when he needs to focus, that brief, chaste kiss pushes its way into his mind and banishes his string of thought.

_Well, if you’ve been waiting for your match, you may actually have found it._

It’s easy enough to stay busy. It should be easy to stay distracted. But he has been failing spectacularly at ignoring Alina’s presence under his roof.

In the weeks that have passed since their conversation in the library, since that brief contact, the memory of it has dogged him ruthlessly, pushing its way to the fore at the most inconvenient times.

The muscle in his jaw clenches, just a little.

 

* * * * *

 

Spurred by my ballsy question to Ivan about wavelengths of light - I hadn’t known the answer myself, actually - I’ve switched much of my focus to learning about the realms of my own power. Unique in all the world, singular, maybe never seen before. Something that is only, _can_ only ever be mine. And more than that, something that can only be known by one person. What I mean is, it isn’t a one-way relationship. The light, whatever I call on when I work with it, is alive just as much as I am. We belong to one another. It’s just that unlike other Summoners, unlike any other Grisha, even the Darkling, I am the only one of my kind. I am its only embodiment in the world, and I’m overtaken with a kind of obsession to do it justice.

I’m nibbling on the pad of a thumb while I read, feet up on the windowsill in my sitting room, chair tipped onto its back legs. I’m on a graph of the electromagnetic spectrum that stretches over two full pages. It isn't complete as I know it, but it's still amazing what Grisha know of the world. How they’ve measured so much of the parts of light that can’t be seen or even perceived by humans is astounding and almost humbling.

I taunted Ivan about how much of what I do goes on in places unseen, in invisible realms. Looking at the sweep of the line on the pages, the overwhelming majority that exists outside of our ken, thinking about how part of Grisha power must be, at some level, just as much miracle as it is science. About the invisible nature of Grisha power... in general....

I go very, very still, my thumb frozen between my teeth.

...And now I know, just a little, what it must have felt like when Mal had wrapped his hand around Alina’s wrist. Because I’m standing at the threshold of my own doorway, and on the other side is the heart of my own power. My birthright.

The chair falls onto all four legs with a thump, and I abandon my book, open on a table, and immediately leave for the secreted privacy of the forest.

I have work to do.

 

* * * * *

 

When a wave of nausea swells up in me, I decide to be done for the night. And done, at least for a while, at that end of the light spectrum altogether. My questions about what I might be able to do have been answered, anyway, and now all I need to do is practice and refine.  
  
I should also really see a Healer in the morning.

Nnnno. No, I should see one now. Right now. They may not know what radiation is, but I know that it doesn't fuck around.

 

* * * * *

 

I sleep through the night without waking to void fluids from either end, and the only symptom I feel in the morning is a little weakness. I'll take a day or two off from Botkin's classes. I've learned a valuable lesson, and in the future, maybe I won't be quite so brash. But what was I supposed to do, test it out on an animal? No.

I'm about to find out exactly how hardy a Grisha can be. They don't get sick. Maybe that means they can heal from a little radiation poisoning without permanent damage, too. It's annoying as shit, but what I did last night was irresponsible. Which is a laughable understatement. I have so much work to do, and I can't to any of it if I'm dead.

Edward will be burning much larger and more toward blinding for a while. It'll be a test of my endurance at the same time it's a prayer for the panacea of a Grisha's nature.

 

* * * * *

 

I have to read the note I get at breakfast more than once for it to make sense - I keep yawning so much the words blur together.

Apparently I’m to meet Baghra tonight, “after dark.”

She’s going to yell at me for being late again no matter when I show up. If I try to be early, she’ll instead yell at me for being too stupid to read a note.

In a perverse way, I think I really kind of like her.

Clocks exist here. I know they do. But apparently Ravka doesn’t see the need to formally adopt them. I’m actually pretty ok with that - cranky, terrifying, old women notwithstanding.

 

* * * * *

 

“Why the change of heart?” I ask carefully when I reach Baghra at the lakeside. The water is so choppy that the moon and stars on its surface are more blurs of white than anything.

She hasn’t said word one about me being late.

“You hardly beat my door down, did you?” She snipes.

She’s hiding something in a specifically churlish way. Which has me assuming she got a “talking to,” which has me wanting to hit someone upside his stupid, black-haired head.

“You wanted me to prove how much I wanted to train by being a disrespectful shit? You wanted me to ignore your wishes and impose my will over yours until you just, what, caved? I’m sorry, are you _trying_ to bring up another megalomaniac?”

“So that was you being respectful,” she says, flat. “Liar,” is implied. Heavily.

“Christ, woman, if anyone’s earned it, you have,” I say sincerely. I mean… except for that whole ‘oops, I parented wrong and the result might be the destruction of the world’ thing.

She purses her lips and the tip of her silvery cane thuds into the ground. “Close your eyes,” she snaps. “And your mouth, if you can manage it. We have work to do.”

"Actually... about that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jumps up and down, waving enthusiastically at Smiling_Penelope*
> 
> (she's the genius behind some SERIOUSLY badass sh*t whose foundation I laid out in this chapter)
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 6/30/18: Added a bit to the scene where she's studying light that mentions Grisha science hasn't mapped the whole of the EM spectrum, and two short scenes after.


	13. Parlor Tricks

“That was a fool thing to do, girl,” Baghra says. I wouldn’t call her tone angry, of course, but I don’t think “dangerous” would be inaccurate, which is still weird enough.

“Yes, well… I really don’t have a comeback for that. I learned a lesson, at least.” I scrunch up my nose a little. “I think.”

Disapproval, aggressive disapproval is rolling from her in waves.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone else testing it out, ok?” I snap. “Jesus. And now I know where the throttle is. _Anyway,_ it wasn’t a lethal dose, especially since I won’t be exposed again, and I’m hoping the healing power of my lustrous Grisha physiology will fill in the rest. So I need to take it easy physically, but… I could show you some of the things I’ve figured out? You could see what’s in my arsenal,” I offer with a shrug. Probably to make it seem like I don’t care about her answer. But if I have to do that, then it’s because I _do_ care. Which is, to say the least, vexing.

I think I understand on a personal level the Aleksander who was pissed off about wanting Alina. Relationships are ridiculous, distracting, and they cloud your judgement and impede your ability to think clearly. Emotions can be equally as obnoxious.

But you can’t exactly make of that go away by being pissed off about it. The “other” Darkling was glaring proof of that. Maybe that’s the difference between us. True to gender stereotypes, I have the better understanding of the human heart. Which, given what a robot I can be, is freaking hilarious.

Baghra pulls me back to the action rather effectively: “Start with the Cut.”

I roll my eyes. “Your kid is confident I did it," I whisper, "why do you need proof?”

“Why are you so mouthy?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say innocently. “And anyway, that feels like too much right now. Parlor tricks first, then I’ll try it in a night or two, depending on how I feel.”

“Hmph.”

“Ah, my favorite symphony.”

She glowers at me.

“You’re right. Violins are much better. Though personally, I prefer cellos. Such a rich tone.” I have to hurry at the look on her face to add, “And now to the demonstration! Don’t want to waste your time.”

“An immortal’s precious and fleeting time,” I wanted to say. But we’re in the open, and I’m not a complete moron. There’s also how tightly she’s gripping her cane now.

I step back into the safety of the tree line, then raise my hands.

 

 

* * * * *

 

“...You turned everything green,” she says, flatly unimpressed.

I shake my head and have to choke a laugh before it can get out. “I mean, technically? But no. This is night vision. Properly contained, we could go to the deepest reaches of the earth, completely void of light, and this would let us see. Us, but no one else. To everyone else, it’d still just be pitch black.”

“Hmph.”

I laugh, but I make it so quiet she can’t hear.

I mean, I _had_ told her they were parlor tricks. Still, she’s fucking adorable. Sometimes. In a very particular and specific way. Which I would never say that to her because I’m not suicidal.

 

 

* * * * *

 

I show her everything I can do and hold nothing back, which is an admitted risk. Her kid is her priority, and if she feels like she needs to, she won’t hesitate to turn me over. But since I don’t want to hurt him and I don’t want to let himself enact his colossally stupid plan, I feel confident enough - “confident” enough, this is Baghra, after all - that I can stay balanced on the tightrope.

She’s unusually quiet through the whole thing, and when I finish, all she does is ask me if I’ve been doing work on my own (“doing anything but sitting on your backside and eating cakes” is how she puts it). She approves of my meditation, and of Edward. Who she doesn’t call by name, because I’m not about to tell her that my little buddy has a name. Or that he’s my little buddy. Or a he.

She gives me some instruction, particularly on the meditation, and it’s like drops of water to a drought-parched throat, especially when she tells me to come back when I’m “ready to work.” Which I choose to hear as “When you’re feeling better.”

So much of life is in the interpretation.

 

 

* * * * *

 

He’s avoiding me. The Darkling. And I’m starting to get dead curious as to why.

True, he didn’t have a habit of looking around for me whenever I saw him passing through the Hall before which, also true, wasn’t often. But this is different. He isn’t focused on whatever he’s reading or whoever he’s giving orders to or hearing a report from so much as he is fixedly glued to it. If it was anyone but Aleksander Morozova I’d seriously wonder if I wasn’t being narcissistic. But it isn’t anyone else, and unless something major is going down - and lasting several weeks - there’s no reason for him to be acting this way.

So he’s avoiding me. Which means it’s time to pay him a visit. Which is unfortunate, because I don’t want to. Having a conversation with him is like running a goddamned triathlon. There’s still so much up in the air that until he makes another play, I was enjoying living my own stupid life. But his cage has obviously gone un-rattled too long, and he’s sure as shit not going to have a placid ride while I’m around.

I don’t smile at the thought.

Ivan isn’t much better. True, we’ve had that comfortable system of ignoring one another. But since our last...conversation? Confrontation? it’s almost aggressive on his part, even angry, though I can’t pick out exactly what makes me think that. Some undefinable thing in his posture, maybe, or a rigid tightness to his muscles.

I might give him shit for it, but every time I think about being the one to break the blockade, that flush of heat I’d felt as we’d stared each other down pops into my head, and I end up keeping my biting comments to myself.

Men. Obnoxious babies.

...God help me when Nikolai gets here. With my temper, he’s going to play me like a fiddle.

 

 

* * * * *

 

When we’re in the hut, sometimes I ask questions of Baghra in a quiet undertone.

“How old are you?”

“How has no one figured out you two look so much alike? Or that you’re always here century after century? Do you go on long sabbaticals in the country every two hundred years or so?”

“Why don’t you get tailored?”

“If you control darkness, does that mean you can banish it as well as call it?”

“How does it work, exactly, what you do? Are you sucking all the light in or banishing it all from a space? And if you’re technically bending light either way, can you do other things?”

“Have you met Botkin? I feel like the two of you could bond over a series of unintelligible grunts.”

My curiosity is somewhat dampened when she finally hits me with her cane. _Hard._ In the side. She doesn’t do it again for all the yelling and swearing I do, and I really want to keep up the questioning just to prove I can.

I don’t. I have more faith in her ability to repeatedly swing a surprisingly hard stick than I do in my ability to not cave under the twentieth or so welt.

 

 

* * * * *

 

“Are you ever going to let me do _your_ hair?” I ask Genya innocently.

From behind me and with a hair pin at the ready between her lips, she gives me the dirtiest look I have ever seen.

I just roll my eyes. “Fine, fine. Don’t teach me. Keep me under your maniacal thumb for all my days, completely dependent on you to look at all presentable. Personally, I’d love to see people’s faces if I walked the halls of the palace looking like a storm-blown scarecrow. But _anyway,_ on to a much more interesting topic. Which is a lie, because it will probably be super boring. Where has he gone off to this time?”

The Darkling, I mean. I like to give her openings every now and again. On him, on her bullshit - which is to say the bullshit she’s going through, which I never expect her to talk about, and which she never does - on my opinions or training, on the gossip that I find mind-numbing but she so enjoys sharing. Any number of things. I wonder sometimes if she has any real friends, and it breaks my heart a bit, because despite all the arguments a person could make, Genya is remarkable and strong and good-natured. But she’s looked down on by the Grisha because she’s not “one of them,” (idiots), she’s looked down on by the palace servants out of jealousy or because the Queen is so obvious in her disdain, and she’s not a peer to anyone else.

I don’t let myself dwell on it. Because it makes me want to kick the Darkling right in his ancient junk. Sure, he told her he’d get her out if she wanted. But he had her well enough manipulated into place by then that he knew she’d never take him up on the offer. And why is she even there? You can’t tell me he doesn’t have other spies in the Palace, and someone as lecherous as the “King” would hardly be one for pillow talk, anyway. Ravkan monarchs don’t have a habit of dying under mysterious circumstances, and census information - which is a new and horrible kind of mind-numbing - doesn’t have them living suspiciously shorter than any other noble, either. Which might be its own kind of suspicious. And why would the Darkling make an exercise of taking them out, anyway? They almost always have sons, and I would think that when your ultimate plan is to take the important chair, watching generation after generation of Kings die untimely deaths would just be teasing yourself with the thing you can’t have. It would get under your skin, make you impatient. Or maybe it’s like a promise he makes to himself, or a small satisfaction he allows with every generation, to watch one more idiot bite it early. For no real reason, at the expense of whatever lackey he gets to do the job for him. What would their suffering matter anyway, they’ll be gone before he can blink.

Then again, Genya isn’t killing the King, is she? She’s just making him weak and infirm. People probably expect assassinations. Not what’s coming.

“...Alina?”

“What.”

“You’re going to break the comb.”

I look down and find my fist tightened around it so hard my knuckles are going white and blotchy. I toss it onto the desk with a huff and ignore the shrewd, covert look she gives me.

“He always leaves like this, or at least he has since I’ve been here. Off to some front or another.”

I shake my head and look away. Let her think I’m cheesed because I’m feeling neglected. It’s better than the truth, and if it makes me look like a spoiled baby, all the better.

“...You miss him.”

I snort. I can’t help it.

“I didn’t know you two had grown so close,” she jokes, her hands stilling. She gives a little poke to an old bruise on the back of my neck and adds, _”You_ certainly haven’t said anything.”

“Ow! Damnit, woman!” I swat her hand away and she grins, her perfect eyes sparkling.

“We haven’t,” I say, mulish. “I was… I just got lost on a semi-related train of thought. But why _does_ he leave so often? I know he doesn’t cut swaths through armies himself.” It would save time, lives, and resources if he did. But if he stopped holding back, then so might Ravka’s would-be invaders. What was it Baghra had once said? Fear is a powerful ally, but feed it too much and it will turn on you. Something like that.

Genya resumes work on my hair, though her pace is more thoughtful than goal-oriented. Despite my mood, I close my eyes in pleasure at the sensation.

“Overseeing sensitive operations?” She muses. “I don’t really know. I was never a part of the Second Army,” she shrugs. “I had other things to focus on.”

I wonder if she doesn’t know how subtly forlorn she seems at any mention of her station, or if it’s an act for my benefit. The former, I think. More and more, I get the impression that she’s relieved when she’s around me. I don’t know how much of our interactions are faked, exactly, but if she’s faking the way she lets her hair down, so to speak, then she’s a much better actress than I give her credit for.

I wonder if, lacking my letters to Mal to turn over to the Darkling, she’ll still ask him if he thinks I’ll hate her when this is all over. I know she’s a spy, but I also know she comes here because she feels easy around me. The truth is, I wouldn’t take that away from her even if she weren’t so easy to be around.

There’s a subtle shift in her eyes that tells me we’re not alone any longer. That wherever this goes now isn’t going to stay between us. She stills and puts her hands on my shoulders - a gesture meant to convey trust and closeness - and meets my eyes in the mirror, making it clear that whatever is coming next isn’t supposed to be answered with some joke. “Do you mind if I ask… what do you think of him?” She sounds nothing but very, very curious.

I hold eye contact for a moment, then let my gaze drop. It lets me concentrate better, but to her, will just look thoughtful. Most of the time I enjoy this particular game, when I know what I say is going to get back to him. Because when I talk to him, I might be lying, right? But why would I lie to my bestie Genya when we’re having private girl talk? And the truth is, at least for this question, I don’t have to lie much.

“I think he’s the loneliest person I’ve ever met. And tired. But driven. I think he’s lighter and darker than he wants people to believe, and he doesn’t know himself half as well as he thinks he does. Though to be fair, that’s true of pretty much everyone. You’re the only person you can’t be objective about. He’s smart, but probably obtuse. He’s….” ‘Singular,’ I almost say. But I’d used that word to describe his mother to him. “Unique,” I say instead.

Genya walks around to lean against the edge of the vanity. She shakes her head, a little incredulous. “I’ve never seen anyone treat him the way you do. How are you not afraid of him? You were never even intimidated, not from the first day I saw you.”

I shrug and look away. “He’s just a person, Genya."

"Yes, but he's also a person who could have you thrown in a dungeon."

"Yes," I parrot, "but he won't. If it was my fear he wanted, he'd have treated me very differently from minute one. ...I know what I mean to him."

“What?”

I shrug again. “The answer his problems. To the blight that’s stained his family’s name for generations. Frankly I’m flummoxed - happy, but flummoxed - a Darkling was allowed to remain after that, but they’ve always been powerful, and Ravka needed that." And I preferred to know where he was. "It’s a pretty ballsy move at all, the whole Second Army. All it does is piss off the rest of the world. But here it is, monarchy after monarchy.

“People tell you what they want from you and what they expect from you the instant you meet them. He’s more private and secretive than most, but he's still just a person.”

She considers me. “What do you think he wants? From you, I mean.”

It’s a moment, but I look back up at her, my face unreadable. “He wants Ravka safe.” I consider, but decide against any personal “guesses,” even just friendship. “Aside from that, you’d have to ask him.”

She won’t get the barb. That’s ok. I know it’s there.

“...Ok. And what do _you_ want?” She has an almost worried look when she asks, but it breaks away to a mischievous smile. The first part is real, at least. “Especially from him.”

My lips twitch in the direction of a smile, just minutely. I don’t think it would be called an especially happy thing.

“I want….” I stall and sober, and eventually just sigh. “Well. That, my love, is a complex and deeply personal question, probably mind-numbingly philosophical, ultimately irrelevant, and a conversation to have over an obscene amount of alcohol. And in any case, how much can it possibly matter? I may be in his color, I may sit at his table, but everyone knows who’s in charge. And I don’t have to tell you that when a powerful man wants something, no matter what it is, they don’t tend to give two shits about the opinions of others. Not even if one of them is part of what they want. I’ll tell you what I told him: right now, I’m useful. It doesn’t have to matter much beyond that.”

Yet.

 

 

* * * * *

 

On principle, I take to spending time down in the Hall. I’ve appropriated a magnificent overstuffed armchair just back from the fire and a little off to the side that’s always either vacant, or quickly made vacant as I approach. I only ever go down when Genya is with me, and usually I have my face stuffed in a book or notes spread around me, but it’s something.

 

 

* * * * *

 

"What happened to your face?" Baghra asks bluntly.  
  
I reply, light and conversational, while I'm settling automatically  on the ground. We've been working on my meditation. "Combat training."

"Did you spit in every Healer's soup?"

I huff a little laugh to myself and explain why I've opted out of getting healed for minor things like bruises.  
  
If I didn't know better - and I'm not  _entirely_ sure I do - I'd swear she's choking down a look of approval.

 

* * * * *

 

We have a lot of conversations when we’re in my rooms, Genya and I.

“Hey, that bath stuff you gave me. The one that makes the water look like a glittering pool of melted gold? Thank you again for that, by the way,” I aside. “But that’s not _real_ gold in there, right?”

“No,” she says with a distracted shake of her head. She’s snacking on some foreign sweet out of an ornate little box. Despite me swearing up and down that I can’t bloody stand sugary things - or perhaps because of it, since I won’t steal them - she seems to go out of her way to bring her scores to my room to eat. “It isn’t real flecks of gem or silver, either. But don’t tell anyone else that. As far as anyone who can afford it knows, it’s all real. The Darkling just doesn’t allow it. So the Fabrikators work their magic, no one is the wiser, and they royal coffers are left a little less bare.”

Hm. There’s a point in his favor, at least.

Genya pulls a face. “Until the King or Queen get into the mood to go shopping or throw a party.”

I’m not good company after that, because I can’t stop dwelling on an idea I’ve had that would change… everything. I wish I could say the holdup is that I’m trying to decide if I’m willing to pay the price. But I am. That’s not even a question. The holdup is whether or not I’m willing to come to terms with what it says about me that I don’t have to consider it.

It’s not that I don’t respect human life. It’s that when a person crosses the line to irredeemable and uses their time in the world to waste and hurt it and other people, _especially_ when it is literally their only job to do the exact opposite, what’s the fucking point anymore? People tell you who they are. It’s only romantics and idiots who don’t listen.

There are things choking up this world that are far worse than wasting gold on bathwater. Most people can’t do squat about it. But I am in not most people.

 

 

* * * * *

 

Two months after being whisked away to live as veritable nobility (ew), I’ve grown familiar enough with my new world - haha - that I have attention to spare. And it is all used to drive me to distraction with worry over poor, stupid, jerkface, beautiful blue-eyed Mal Oretsev. One morning when I wake, I know it’s time to nut up and stop making excuses.

It’s better I take my bag of tricks for a road test now than during some life-or-death moment in the larger world, anyway. I tell myself that. It still hasn’t stopped me from procrastinating for weeks with thoughts of all the ways it could go horribly wrong.

The last preparations are easy enough.

“Genya, would you believe I’ve never seen a silver piece?”

“Well you were an orphan and then career military, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

I give her a flat look. “My point is, do you think you could sneak me one?”

She laughs. It’s hard not to blush when she does that. “Alina, you could ask for a sack of gold and gems and it would be waiting for you before your next meal. But yes, I can ‘sneak’ you a silver piece.”

“You are magnificent. Which I’m not actually going to tell you because your sickeningly perfect head would get too large for your shoulders. Also, please don’t keep your favorite Sun Summoner waiting. I have a lifetime of traumatic poverty to exercise or whatever.”

“I thought you grew up on an estate.”

“Shhh, you’ll ruin my pity play.”

The next day, a little black velvet box is waiting for me on my desk when I retire. Inside is a silver coin, shined and polished and flawless. I honestly feel bad - quite bad - that I won’t be keeping it.

After that, it’s easy to steal a servant’s robe and a set of less expensive “normal” clothing of the right approximate size from the mountains of daily fresh laundry at the Palace, especially when I can literally make myself invisible. I walk around that way sometimes just for kicks, to hear and see what it’s like when I’m not there, so that isn’t the challenging part. No, the challenging part is what comes now that I have everything ready.

 

 

* * * * *

 

I don’t write the letter until just before I head out. It’s the only part of this I’d be hard-pressed to convincingly lie my way out of. Which makes no logical sense, but that’s emotions, for you.

 

_Mal,_

_I’m safe. I hope you are, too._

_I’m dressed in fine clothes, sleep in a soft bed, and have more food than I could-- well, than you could eat. You’d hardly recognize me, actually. I’m stronger and healthier than I’ve ever been. Which isn’t to say that I’m better off without you, and if you let yourself think that for even a second then you’re a big stupid baby._

_Don’t be a big stupid baby, Mal._

_Something should have been sent to you from me, or at least because of me. Bitter medicine I’m sure, but chill the hell out and enjoy what you can. Just not too much. You know, fiscal responsibility._

_So yeah. Safe. Not being flayed or tortured or whatever else who knows what idiots are saying._

 

I don’t know what would possess him to listen to anyone who suggests I’m being flayed, except for the sentiment people allow to rob them of common sense. Because yes, that’s what Ravka is going to do with the magical answer to all its problems: torture her. Honestly.

The letter goes on,

 

_Not mad at you or anything else stupid like that. We’re good. And we’ll see each other. Don’t know when, but probably sooner rather than later. Hopefully? I don’t know. Just try not to go too gray before then._

 

It’s hard not to make a joke along the lines of, “And don’t catch anything too disgusting, either.” But it would be a bad idea for a number of reasons.

 

_Here’s the trick. I can’t write you again, and if you try to write me… well, don’t. Don’t. If you want to, save them for me and hand them over when we meet. Maybe I’ll be able to explain when we talk in person._

_Stay safe until then._

 

It’s hard not to finish the letter with “Love you,” but I’m convinced that would be a patently bad idea. He loves Alina, and by now he’s either figured that out, or is in a hell of a lot of inner turmoil while it’s trying to make itself known. I already had that idiot talk with him my only night in Kribursk, and I really don’t want to make it any worse than I already have.

I don’t sign the letter. He won’t need it - neither would the few people I _really_ don’t want reading it - but to the average person, there’s nothing inside that should tell them who it’s from. It’s a risk, but I need to take it. For myself. For the girl who was… is? in here.

 

 

* * * * *

 

A penchant for sneaking off and disappearing all hours of the day makes sneaking off and disappearing today easy to get away with.

I walk into the trees and make my way to the arbor tunnel that separates the Darkling’s world from the King’s. Once there, I slip off my kefta, turn it inside out to hide the glint of embroidery, and wedge it high up in a tree. People never look up, and even if by some small chance someone does, it’s hardly bright Corporalki red. Underneath, I have my first disguise: normal clothes. Over that I slip the cream and gold servant’s robes and a satchel, whose color I change. Paranoid people get caught less.

I change my face and hair. I’ve practiced this ruthlessly when in private, on top of Edward. It will stick if I can maintain even a scrap of presence of mind, so I just have to be very careful, and hyper aware of my surroundings. I don’t think that will be a problem, given how my heart is already hammering while I’m still hidden.

I take a calming, centering breath, fix my posture to the subdued pride of a Palace servant, and walk out like I’m a faceless someone who’s doing exactly what she’s supposed to be doing.

After I pass through the gates to the city proper, I turn the first corner I see and, as I sweep the crook of an elbow over my face as if I have an itch, change my features again. I do the same when I pass through the gates into the lower town.

I ask the first guard I see where I can send post, playing a bland, hopelessly incompetent new servant as an excuse. It’s near the gates, which should only be about a fifteen minute walk from where I am. I change my face two more times on the way, once with the elbow trick and once via a detour and a ten-minute wait in an alley, but it still makes me nervous. I’d feel much more comfortable if I could change my height or build, but I’m too keyed up to be confident that I can hold that flawlessly.

There’s no charge for mail from the Palace, and with a good enough lie, I’m able to get what sounds like a solid recommendation for a bakery that’s apparently second only to the postman’s wife. The second bird I want to hit with this outing requires something authentically peasant.

The shop is only just down the main road from the post, and I duck into a quiet alley off of a deserted side street, strip out of my pilfered robe, stuff it in the bag, and shake myself out to loosen up, because now is the tricky part.

I make myself look like a man. He’s gruff, but not huge - keeping up an illusion that’s substantially larger than me when I have to lift my arm and physically interact with another person would be more or less impossible. He’s just handsome enough to be looked on well, but not so handsome as to be memorable.

I walk into the bakery and order a slice of honey cake. It smells so sweet my stomach turns, but looks fresh and is a beautiful, dripping golden color. The woman behind the counter is friendly, and when she boxes it up and hands it to me, I flip Genya’s silver piece to her. I’m out the door before she can catch it and look up. It’s enough to buy everything in the place several times over, but I could hardly have told Genya I’d never seen a copper piece. And besides, she seems like a good person; I have no problem overpaying someone like that.

The trip back to the Palace is easy enough. The cake replaces the servant’s robes before I get to the gates, and though I drop the male disguise, I feel much less conspicuous while I’m still in plain clothing.

...Compassion for the less fortunate be damned, I do not mourn the way the smell of urine disappears almost the moment I pass through into the wealthier part of the city.

Once my kefta is back on, I cast myself out of sight and return the borrowed clothes and robe. As far as anyone knows, all I’ve done is have one of my sessions of vanishing into the Little Palace forest.

 

 

* * * * *

 

On the walk “home,” a motion catches my eye. It’s me, reflected in the glass of a large window in the face of the Little Palace. The sun’s hitting it just right to make it into one vast mirror.

“Holy shit,” I breathe.

This is the first time in weeks I’ve seen my reflection, even just in passing. Genya works on me, so I know I look presentable, and beyond that I just don’t care. But I’ve never seen myself… well, “myself?” from a distance like this.

Alina undersold her appearance after she discovered her powers. She would never look like Genya or Zoya, no. But that’s because those women are both sex on legs. The woman I see in the glass is _beautiful,_ even by Grisha standards. It’s just a very specific kind of beautiful. Soft and inviting, natural and warm, even elegant in her way. Her curves are delicate, but unmistakably there, hugged perfectly by the kefta. Her skin is luminous, her hair thick and smooth, and what I had thought were muddy brown eyes are now like fragments of chocolate diamond, bright and glinting with awareness, with presence and intelligence.

My first real thought is to wonder if this is why the Darkling has started avoiding me. Because from what I’m seeing? I wouldn’t blame him.

 

 

* * * * *

 

Fortune smiles on me, as I see Ivan walking toward the main doors I’ve just entered through. I give a little whistle to get his attention. I might be feeling a little cocky, riding high on what I just saw in the glass.

I reach into my shoulder bag, carefully remove the plain box, and hold it out. “Give this to your boss,” I say.

He - wait for it - sneers, and says “I’m not an errand boy, Starkov.”

“Well, not _my_ errand boy,” I say with a cocky smile. “But you do like to see him happy, so here.” I thrust the package forward. “Tell him it’s from you, I don’t give a shit. Just give it to him while it’s fresh.”

I have to jangle the package in front of him after a long pause, but he takes it.

His eyes slip down to my pack.

“That bag is hideous,” he says.

“So is the state of your cuticles and the way you walk around with your chest sticking out like a gorilla,” I reply. I lean in to whisper. The effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that the top of my head only reaches his shoulder and that the heat, that fucking heat, is there immediately this time when I get too close. “But sometimes we keep the bad thoughts to ourselves.”

I pass by him before he can reply. And smack him on the ass as I do, a wide, bratty grin on my face.

I ride high until I make it to the staircase that leads up to my wing, and I can’t help but remember what’s coming next.

...I suppose that means the decision is made, at least. Or rather, accepted. I’ve more or less known I was going to do it since the idea occurred to me. Accepting that is just….

Well. I was never going to come out of this with my hands clean. At least this way, I’m not copping out and letting someone else do the bloody work for me.

The thought isn’t comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7/16/18: added a tiny scene in the middle where Baghra comments on a bruise of Alina's


	14. Chapter 14

I see Ivan again two days later. He aggressively ignores me, as if I’ve implied that the Darkling is .0005% less than perfect and he’s decided I’m just not worth pummeling into the marble floor. Which is ok. Because he doesn’t curl his fingers in fast enough to keep me from seeing that he’s trimmed his cuticles.

I grin like an idiot when I pass and, once he’s out of earshot, laugh to myself off and on for a full ten minutes. At least eight students are probably left wondering if I’ve lost my mind. I figure it’s good for them.

After that, I get so curious about what’s actually up his backside that I find myself watching him whenever he’s near. Every time, without fail, his eyes find me just as he’s about to leave the room or one of us passes the other, and he catches me staring. And every time, to my chagrin, my eyes dart away the moment his meet them.

 

 * * * * *

 

If prompted, Baghra will talk about the Volcra being the Darkling’s punishment. A testimony to his arrogance and greed. Something like that. But that’s just one perspective. By my math, her son is at _least_  eleven hundred years old, so maybe she’s twelve, or fourteen, or more. That doesn’t mean she always knows what she’s talking about. If anything, surviving to that age would make you _more_ closed-minded and biased.

Myself, I don’t think the world bothers to be that personal. She can anthropomorphize cause and effect all she wants, but that assumes the universe gives enough of a shit about us and our tiny-ass lives to bother.

Personally? I think the volcra are no less or more than the byproduct of some idiot attempt by one person to play with power he didn’t understand, because he was arrogant and thought it was his “destiny” to inherit it since, on pure random chance, he was the soul who was born to the daughter of an absolute, out-of-this-world gifted genius. In my mind, that’s right up there with “the world took it personally,” but he let it make him overconfident, maybe greedy, and certainly careless.

Ancient or short-lived, powerful or smart, dirty or crowned and bejeweled. We’re just people. Little bitty nothings walking around and playing our games and making everything much more dramatic than it needs to be.

Are the Darkling and his mom smarter than me? Yup. Could they squish me like a bug? Yup. But if they follow the typical human pattern of ossifying more and more as you age… well, they’re both just about as blind as a person can get, too.

Me, I take everything with a grain of salt. I find it to be a sound policy. Ancient immortals can be wrong, and idiots can be right. The world just does what it wants.

 

* * * * *

 

I find a flaw in my plan, and as a result, I can’t look Genya in the eye for a full day. It only happens the next one because I force myself. I act morose and blame it on bad dreams, and if I’ve done it right - which I have - she should assume I’m just homesick. She has to have thought it would hit me sooner or later.

It’s vital that I not act strange. That I stick to my routines. A lot of people are going to be heavily scrutinized soon, and I need to not give anyone - frighteningly observant Darklings, for instance - a single reason to look at me. No aberrant behavior, no changes, nothing “off.”

Unfortunately, thinking of the future was exactly what made me realize that what I wanted to do was a bad idea.

When a people are at war, one thing they crave is certainty, and Ravka has been at war for generations. And one thing that undermines certainty is change. Like changes in leadership.

If I kill the King, Vasily takes the throne. Then when I kill Vasily, Nikolai takes the throne. But if I kill Vasily first, it’s only one regime change the people have to go through.

I know Genya wants to take the King down herself. Yes, the Darkling manipulated her into it. But he did it so well that it is now her literal reality. On the one hand, I would never take that away from her. On the other hand, I want to kill him. 

Either way, his days are numbered, and that is something I can hold onto.   
  
The fete is four months away. If I work quickly, _quickly_ , I can make this happen soon enough to leave enough of a royal grieving period that there's no chance the winter fete will be called off. Not when the King so badly needs the points a Sun Summoner will give him. After that, it will be a matter of weeks until he becomes bedridden and unable to hurt anyone ever again. Then, depending on what the Darkling has planned - and what I can learn of it - I can have my fun. But if I have to wait until after the fete, I will. This isn't something I'll rush, it's too important. And it's too important that I not get caught. Given that I don't know what I'm doing, I need to walk every step with calm, objectivity, and a clear head. And if you don't have to take a risk, you don't take it. 

  

* * * * *

 

I try to call up the urgency and adrenaline that had reduced the world to a pinpoint when I’d used the Cut. That place where any notion of “can” or “can’t” was stripped away, and all that was left was a need and the thing that was waiting, bursting to fill it, to answer a call I hadn’t even known to make.

It doesn’t work. And of course, the harder I try to get into that headspace, the further I get from the perfect, emotionless clarity I need.

“You were emotional last time,” Baghra says, like I don’t already know what my problem is. “That was what let the power break through.” Her ability to sound at all times annoyed and impatient makes me wonder how she hasn’t just keeled over by now, Grisha health and longevity be damned.

“You don’t goddamned say,” I reply testily. I sidestep just a hair in an unconscious gesture of fear of her cane. She’s right, though. She always is when it comes to my power.

I was emotional. Just like her, just like her young son. Baghra out of the fury of a young child, Aleksander out of self defense, and me to save someone else. But the Cut was death, there was no mistake about it.

“Speak to me like that again and you can figure it out yourself, brat,” she snaps. I grit my teeth, and she goes on. “You don’t have to be emotional to use it once you’ve found it. Just like you don’t have to be facing down the Shadow Fold every time you call on your power. The path is there. What have I been telling you about your power?”

A lot, actually. But I don’t suppose she’ll appreciate that answer, so I just give her the one she wants to hear: “That it’s no different from my muscles or lungs or bones. It’s part of me, and works at my will.”

She seems satisfied. For her. “Again.”

It’s a second to let go of enough of my annoyance to even try to… stop trying. What really does the trick is realizing that all of this means she knows I can do it. She doesn’t actually assume the “rumors” were bull.

When I manage to let go, to stop feeling like I’m missing some trick that will let me do it, I feel the difference immediately. Without the distraction of trying to summon genuine emotions, I feel it there in the air: the Cut. Already made, like she said to another Alina in another life.

In the instant before I bring my hand up in a slicing motion, I feel taller. Bigger and broader.

A blazing arc of golden light bursts to life with a thundercrack and blazes away from me. For a moment, it’s quiet. Then the tops of trees start to fall in a perfect, clean line.

I feel… empty. No. That isn’t right. What I feel is so full that I can’t understand it, past the brim with something bigger and more pure than anything I’ve ever felt. Underneath is a rightness - _I_ feel right. Whole. I couldn’t have known it was something I was missing until now. And this is nothing but the first baby step in a journey my predecessors, Baghra and her son, began hundreds - _hundreds_ \- of years ago.

“Again,” she orders. Then she barks, “And don’t hit anything this time.”

Over and over she orders it. _Again. Again, again, **again,**_ until I keep going without being asked, right arm, right arm, left arm, right arm, one after the other, my ears ringing from the booming noise, like the sky is splitting, like bombs going off all around me, feet away. It’s the sound of nature being bent against its will, twisted just far enough from its natural order, like a sonic boom or a mushroom cloud.

I don’t stop until my arms are shaking, until my skin is shining with a layer of perspiration, until I’m so far past out of breath that every inhale stings my throat, but I’m giddy with the exhaustion, luminous and grinning up at the sky. I can’t help it. I could do _anything_ right now.

“You’ve gotten stronger,” Baghra says. Begrudgingly. I turn my smile on her for no other reason than because I can’t wipe it off my face, and she snaps, “Don’t get full of yourself, girl. A lamb gets stronger too, that doesn’t make it a match for the wolf. Now go away, back to your fluffed pillows and rich food. You’ve put on enough of a show for one night.”

There’s something funny about the way she says it, and it makes my eyebrows twitch together and sends me glancing around.

In the distance, spilling from the arbor tunnel that leads to the Grand Palace like blood from a wound, soldiers and servants and people in nightdresses are crowding to get a look. I turn around and see faces in every window of the Little Palace, huddled together and staring, gaping, some actually pressed up against the glass.

It annoys me.

 

* * * * *

 

For two days, every time someone in the Little Palace sees me, they stop to stare and whisper. Groups huddle to one side in halls, their eyes glued to me, mouths open on some of them. It's five minutes at every meal of quiet whispers and open stares.  
  
It's two more weeks after that before they're more or less back to behaving normally.

 

* * * * *

 

Alina isn’t always easy to find, even when Genya takes the trouble to look. It would be impressive enough given what she’s wearing, but it’s even moreso because of the fact that she is literally accompanied by a miniature sun everywhere she goes.

Library? No. Rooms? No. Which means she’s probably wandered off into the woods and there will be no finding her. Still, just to be safe, she asks one of the guards outside the doors that lead to the Darkling’s rooms: “Where is the Sun Summoner?”

The man looks down at her without moving his head. “Kitchens,” he says in a gruff voice.

Genya smiles at him full force, and when he blushes and clears his throat, then swallows thickly, she turns and heads toward the servant’s passage that leads to the kitchens, satisfied. Grouch.

She hears laughter well before she reaches the last set of doors. When she opens them, she freezes and stares, because it’s just two cooks and Alina, and it’s _her_ making them laugh, smiling bigger and with more warmth than Genya honestly thought her capable of. She’s dressed in an apron, and nearly coated in flour. It’s all over her front and smudged on her face and in her hair, along with something that looks to be some sort of batter.

Alina notices her and the smile stays on her face. It grows in warmth, in fact, and Genya feels a stab of fondness, followed immediately by guilt and sorrow.

The Tailor lets herself in, lips quirking to match the mood. “What are you doing?” she asks with mirth in her voice.

“An experiment!” Alina replies in a secretive tone. “I tasted something once, and Anika and Vadim here have been kind enough to help me try to recreate it. Baking is just chemistry, right? So I figure, heh, knock on wood, that with their help it can’t be _too_ hard to figure out.” She casts a quick look around and then leans in, lowering her voice. “The cook here is _terrifying._ She didn’t want to let me in or give me ingredients or help, I only barely got away with it. So I have to get this right before they need the ovens for dinner, because I don’t think she’ll let me do it again.”

Looking around at all the dirty bowls and spoons and trays, the eggshells and mess covering the countertop, Genya can understand why.

“It was disgusting,” Alina goes on. Her voice isn’t as quiet, but it’s still definitely lowered. “The thing, I mean. Well, it was a dessert is why, but even I could tell it was supposed to be _amazing._ I suppose I could make a savory version, but I feel like that’d be taking the fun out of it.” She turns back to her work - gently folding something fluffy and white into what looks like a chocolate batter - and then says, “It’s, uh….” She gives a nervous little laugh that Genya thinks is supposed to be dismissive. “It’s for you, actually.” Genya would wager a free day that Alina would be blushing if not for the work she does every few days to hide it. “And this adorable little Corporalki girl I’ve taken a liking to. And of course, my assistants, here.” She elbows the woman, Anika, playfully, and the younger woman giggles in response as if she’s just having a day with a friend.

Genya’s stomach takes another twist. She came to get information about Alina’s talk with Baghra, and finds her making a mess of herself to do something nice for her, instead.

“Anyway, what’s up?” Alina asks, darting a smile her way as she continues to gently mix. She has such a strange way of speaking.

“Oh, I just wanted to visit,” Genya lies smoothly. She lets herself smile. “But I can see you’re occupied. And if you get flour in my hair, I won’t be held responsible for my actions. I’ll try to catch you at dinner.”

“Sounds good,” Alina answers with a friendly, playful wink.

The moment Genya turns away, her smile drops. Suddenly, she isn’t certain how much longer she can keep doing this.

 

* * * * *

 

“He wants to see you,” says a bass voice from a hulking form. He sounds… broody.

I bite back an “errand boy” comment, collect my things from my place at the Darkling’s table in the Hall, and follow him to the black doors. We walk down the long hallway, side by side, in utter and screaming silence.

When we reach the chamber with the long table in it, Ivan bows at the door and leaves. I don’t know why, but I have to hold back a sigh.

“Alina,” the Darkling greets. He sits at the head and gestures to the chair on his right. The only thing on the dark table is a few papers in a neat pile, and he turns them face down and sets them aside as I near. It’s insulting, even though I know it shouldn’t be.

“I wanted to thank you for the cake,” he says when I sit down. There’s a funny sort of almost-smile on his face. But I can’t help the way my brows pull together. He didn’t call me in here to thank me for a slice of dessert.

“Where did you get it?” he asks.

“Where does one usually get cake?” I pause. “A shop in town.”

His look tints with wry sympathy. Sort of a _You poor sweet innocent girl_ thing. It’s probably meant to humanize him, but all it does is irk me.

“We can’t eat anything that isn’t prepared here in the kitchens, Alina.”

It takes a second for my brain to allow in exactly what he’s saying. As I do I stand up, pushing the chair out. “Did you... did you _throw it away?”_ I ask in disbelief.

“I appreciate that you thought of me. It was... kind.” That’s all he says, and I can read absolutely nothing from his face or tone. He could be admitting something or he could be masking derision. He could be bored. It’s goddamned unnerving.

I grit my teeth, biting back the worst of my temper. “I got it myself,” I snap in a thinly controlled voice.

Then I make a very foolish decision. “Or rather, he did.” I flash the appearance of the man who ordered the cake long enough for him to get a good look.

His eyes widen, just enough.

I dismiss the image with a flick of my hand. “Unless someone wanted to poison a random, made up peasant,” I bite out, “it was fine. It wasn’t out of my sight for a second, the clerk didn’t even turn her back on me to wrap it. I got it because I figured you’d appreciate a peasant recipe, given how you were raised. I’m not a f--” I bite back the expletive, “an idiot.”

“How I was raised?”

For a moment, I’m thrown.

“How…. Seriously? _That’s_ your question?” He says nothing, just waits. I purse my lips. “You’re the second most powerful man in the country and that’s who you were going to be from the minute you were born, but you’re not a selfish dick who thinks he’s overtly better than everyone. You’re not afraid of work or dirt. Didn’t I just say I’m not an idiot? A toddler could put that together. Someone had the uncommon wisdom to inject some humility into you when you were young and I get the impression you know what it’s like to not have the world at your fingertips. This is….” I just shake my head with a noise of disgust and head for the door.

My back feels oddly exposed as I do. How long has it been since anyone had the balls - or stupidity - to treat him like this?

His reaction isn’t his fault, not really, and part of me gets that. You don’t survive as long as he has by taking stupid risks, and at some point, I have to start trying to get through to him. I shouldn’t waste even a single opportunity as infrequently as Alina saw him. Which is why I stop before I get to the door. I turn around and walk back, coming to grip the back of one of the chairs on the far end of the table from him so tightly that I’m glad it’s high quality, or I’d probably damage it.

“I know you’re used to being alone,” I say. Most of the anger in my voice is banked. “You survive. You endure. You make decisions, you live your days, and you do it all alone in a way no one else can understand.” I give him a long look, and when I speak next, my voice is calm and kind, if a little exasperated. “Next time... just _ask_ me first.”

His face is inscrutable. But the thing about people who don’t give you anything to work with is that they’re still hearing everything you say and seeing your expressions. Eye contact is still eye contact. So I hold it long enough to really sink my point in, and then I leave. Without slamming the door.

I get one thing out of this, at least. Everyone is right; I really need to start learning to control my temper. I just handed him a _massively_ valuable card out of my deck for no better reason than to prove a point that didn’t even need proving. Would it have been so bad if he thought I was naive? No. No it wouldnt’ve. In fact, it would have been dead useful. Plus, now he knows I snuck out, which means any future trips I might have wanted to take are off. And just thinking about considering how this jeopardizes my plans almost makes me nauseous.

I fight the urge to thud my head repeatedly against the nearest wall, and this time, I take the secret passage out. It’s good to know how long it is and where it comes out in the guest wing, if nothing else.

It’s also good to not have to control my face until I make it to the safety of my room. I don’t think I have the starch right now.

 

* * * * *

 

By the end of her little speech, he'd wanted to take her against the wall.  
  
How is it she sees him where no one else has? Even he would be hard pressed to put so much together from so little.

He believes he knows the answer, but it is one he will not voice yet, not even in the privacy of his own mind. It is a mistake he made once before, and one he will not repeat.

Still, the things he will be able to do with her....

 

* * * * *

 

About a week later, my next invitation to be graced by his presence comes. But I’m still kind of pissy (and sick over how badly I screwed up) so I decline.

"I have better things to do than fetching you, Starkov."

"And yet."  
  
When his ratcheting insistence grows more aggressive than I wish to tolerate, I push my chair out calmly, stand up, and turn around.

He misinterprets this as acquiescence which, along with bald surprise, is what allows me to dart a hand up and _yank_ him down to my level by the stiff collar of his kefta.

In a voice as quiet as the lick of flame that will become a forest fire if the wind changes just so, I say, “I am not one of his people, Ivan.” He tries to pull back in anger and denial, but my second hand joins my first and my grip turn to iron. I clench every hard-won muscle to keep him in place, but the only thing that holds him there, given the physical difference between us, is my expression. “Not like you, not like his agents or soldiers or spies, not like his chosen few, here,” I tilt my head to indicate the students in the hall. I’m letting angry light gather to me, near-invisible, and it is literally making him sweat. “If I need to pretend to be in front of the right people, I will. But he trusts you, so I do, too, which means I don’t have to pretend for the sake of your staggeringly frail emotional constitution to be something other than what I am. I’m sorry if I stepped in here and broke up your little hero-worshiping bromance, but I think it goes without saying that I really didn’t see it coming any more than anyone else.”

I lean in and my voice lowers so that he’ll have to strain to hear it. “Do I look like I’m in a good fucking mood?”

He doesn’t answer.

“No. And you’re not an idiot, so I trust that if he actually needed something, you would have made that clear by now, unless you just find me particularly charming when I’m annoyed.” I yank him down again until his nose nearly touches mine, and finish through gritted teeth, “So leave. Me. Alone.”

I hold him there another moment, then shove him away from me, turn, and gracefully resume my seat and go back to my notes. Aside from the fact that I’m about as stiff as a rail and the blank expression on my face probably comes off as level five Pissed, I do a passable job of pretending he never came.

It’s a good ten seconds before he leaves, and all the while, I pretend not to notice how the Hall has gone silent and still as a grave.

When I finally get to my room that night, there’s a single piece of honey cake waiting on my desk. When I see it, I freeze and stare as if it’s grown skinny cake legs and is doing a little dance.

I send for Genya, because I just… throwing it out doesn’t seem right. When she asks me where it came from, I just shake my head and say, bewildered and flummoxed:

“...I think it’s an apology.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/1/18: The winter fetemabob is now four months away, not two, and the plan is now to take Vasily out before the fete, not after  
> 8/2/18: Added a little scene after she yelled at him about the cake which makes me smile like a creature of pure, delighted evil  
> 11/26/18: Changed her math to figure DL is at least 1,100, not 650.  
> I figure if, in the books, he looks like he's between 19 - 21 (I picture him older, because personal preference), and he claims to be 120, that should put the lifespan of his current incarnation at at LEAST 200 years. If you carry that over to his past incarnations, and even if you figure the Black Heretic (his supposed great-great-great grandfather) was the first Darkling, at 200 years per Darkling, that's 1,000 years before his present incarnation took over the position up to/roughly one hundred years ago. And who knows how long he was wandering around with his mum before he got the position created for himself in the first place.  
> Tl;dr: dude is older than dirt. 1,100 is probably conservative.


	15. It's Called a "Neg." They're Terrible, but Effective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The winter fete is now four months away, not two, and the plan is now to take Vasya out before, not after.

“Do people send me things?”

Genya glances up from her cake. Apparently it is exquisite. I’m overjoyed for her.

(I am not overjoyed for her.)

(The smell is starting to make me sick.)

I nod down to the confection. “How you reacted, it wouldn’t be unusual for something to arrive at random in my room, but it would have to be from someone who doesn’t know I hate sweets.”

“We haven’t exactly put up banners.”

I roll my eyes. “The Sun Summoner showed up out of ass-backwards nowhere, and it just never occurred to me to wonder where the gifts were.” At the arch of her brow, I add, “Oh don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean. I don’t want their shit, it just wouldn’t make sense that no one is sending any to try to kiss up. You said people were requesting meetings and shows and whatever from the very beginning. Blessings, funerals, the opening of a new cookware emporium, I don't remember. You can’t tell me half the rich people outside the Darkling’s little paradise here aren’t crawling over themselves to suck up to me while I’m small and vulnerable and naive or whatever.”

Her laugh is the most indelicate thing I have ever heard or seen from her. The look of pity on behalf of anyone stupid enough to assume I’m any of those things - except small, that one’s obvious - is downright endearing.

“Oh come on,” I prod. “It would be fun! You know it would be fun.”

When she can get ahold of herself, and swallow the bit of cake that got stuck unchewed in her mouth when her fit started, she says, “Oh, there have been gifts, and some of them have been hilarious or just downright bizarre. The Darkling sends them all back.”

“...He _what?”_ My voice goes dangerously quiet.

“Tell me there’s anything you want or need that you don’t have already, or wouldn’t ask for.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“I know, I know,” she says, making a placating motion with her hands. “But honestly Alina, he’s been doing you a favor. They’re asinine, and with everything you already have on your shoulders….” She shrugs, but it isn’t the ‘I don’t care’ sort of shrug. “I think he wanted to spare you that.”

I don’t react. To my credit, I simply do not react.

“So tell me about some of them,” I say as if the danger of flint over dry leaves has come and gone.

It has, of course, not.

I don’t care that he basically threw stuff out that technically belonged to me. I really _don’t_ want their crap. It’s just proof that he’s already making decisions for me. Decisions _about_ me for me. _By the way Alina, gifts have begun coming in. I think it wise you focus on your training, so I’m turning them away._ Would that have been so hard? No! No it would fucking not!

...Oh.

It isn’t that he made a decision for me that bothers me. It’s that he cares so little, that I as a person am such a non-consideration, that he saw no reason to bother even telling me.

I lose Genya’s description of some of the more interesting gifts and requests to the unsettlingly calm string of cursing that’s going through my head. Because God help me, my feelings are hurt.

When did I turn into an utter and complete moron?

 

* * * * *

 

Once she has finished the cake and we’re sipping tea, Genya asks, “What exactly do I have to bribe you with to get you to tell me what and you and Baghra did that first day? I’m still dying to know. Everyone is, actually, but I’m the only one who isn’t too afraid to ask.”

“Dear God, woman, what a peasant and a crone did in a tiny, windowless hut in the woods is more interesting than court intrigue?” I look at her askance. “Or do you have a much filthier mind than I’ve been giving you credit for?”

She laughs. “Actually, that’s one of the few theories that hasn’t come up.”

“Oh? What has?” _Let it drop, Genya,_ I urge silently.

“There are a lot about her working dark magic on you, making you drink powdered onyx mixed with sacrificial blood--”

“Ew.”

“Yes. There's also goat’s blood, the Darkling’s blood, horse’s blood, virgin blood, lamb’s blood… a lot of blood, really. There’s a theory that she was revealing secret Grisha techniques that she’s never shared with anyone. Or merzost. Some say you spent the day exercising demons from her. My personal favorite is that she hypnotized you, took some of _your_ blood, and used it in a ritual to curse a lover who spurned her.”

“And that took all day?” Honestly, if anyone ever did manage to get under her skin that far, then pissed her off that much, she’d probably just kill him. Maybe cut off his junk first, I don’t know. I bet she was spicy in her day. “Are these people _that_ bored?”

“You’re a very mysterious figure, Alina. You don’t talk to anyone but Ivan and the Darkling, you wear black and sit in your own chair at his table, show off your powers--”

“I do not.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine, you 'use them freely for training purposes.’ And what you did with the Cut the other night…. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I would swear that’s genuine awe in her voice. “Thank you, by the way. Ivan bet me five crowns that you being able to use it was nothing but a rumor.”

“How dare he,” I say blandly.

She smiles. “You’re a more popular topic for speculation here and at the Grand Palace than the Darkling’s love life. Which, by the way, also currently centers around you.”

I sputter into my cup so thoroughly that I have to wipe tea off of my chin. So graceful. So elegant.

She leans forward a little and narrows her eyes at me. “You know, I don’t think I’ll hide your blush anymore, because I would almost swear on my Tailoring kit that’s exactly what you’re doing right now.”

“You’d risk your kit?” I ask, disbelieving.

“I said almost,” she replies imperiously, and sits back. “Alina you look like you just swallowed a lemon.”

I figure the reason for my consternation is a safer topic than the one she wants to pursue, and like as not, she’ll find out eventually anyway. So why the hell not. “He kissed me,” I say, churlish.

“He _what?”_

I hunker down in my chair like a petulant five year-old. “I told him not to do it again. Ever.”

“When?” She demands. “Where?”

Solely because I know to look for it, I see the worry on her face.

“Remember the creepy meeting with the creepy stupid priest?”

She nods and sets her teacup aside.

“It was after that. Apparently he and Ivan had been listening. He got all flirty, well, flirty for him, all,” my voice lowers and I make a face that’s supposed to be sultry, but probably just looks nearsighted, or possibly constipated, “‘You should really get used to the touch of an amplifier, Alina, so here, take my hand,’ and then he just fucking… kissed me. It was brief, just a peck really. He looked confused, I looked confused, then I wanted to murder him or possibly myself, maybe both, par for the course, everyone went on with their lives.”

“But you told him not to do it again. Why?”

“Uh… because I don’t want him to?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Are you a lesbian?”

“Wh-- No I am not a lesbian! Seriously, Genya, _that's_ your first guess? I don't want him to kiss me so I must be a _lesbian?”_ Feminists everywhere are rolling over in their graves.

“That's not a no.”

“Yes, Genya. Yes, I'm a lesbian, and it's you I've been in love with all this time,” I say flatly.

“I'm sorry, darling, but I only like men.”

It's my turn to roll me eyes. “I know what you mean, ok, but come on. He’s not _that_ dreamy.”

“Oh, he absolutely is.”

I give her a flat look. “Ew. Genya, ew. Now I’m not going to be able to get the picture of you two making out out of my head.”

“As beautiful as we both are, you should thank me. And _that_ sounded like a yes. ‘Ew?’ Who says ‘ew’ about the Darkling? You’re mad.”

I am nearing genuinely unamused. “I didn’t say ew about the Darkling, and I am not a lesbian. I'm not anything.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what I said. I like people, not body parts. And attraction doesn't work for me the way it works for other people, anyway.”

The magnificently flawless skin between her eyebrows gets a little wrinkle. “How does it work, then?”

“Ask me when you're older,” I reply, curt.

Under the knowledge that this entire conversation was either requested by Aleksander or is grounds for a report to him, I'm moving from unamused to testy. So I change the subject.

“Anika and Vadim think they’ll have your surprise ready soon. They promised they’d work on it, but I’m pretty sure that was just to get me out of the kitchen. I don’t blame them with the mess I made, but they wouldn’t even let me help clean up.”

Genya looks flummoxed. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“If it’s some social nuance I’m missing, then no, I probably don’t.”

“How can you be so good at reading people and so intensely bad at understanding how they work?”

“One makes sense and the other doesn’t. And is usually stupid and unnecessarily complicated because people refuse to just say what they mean and delight in hiding everything they want and need and expecting you to just magically know anyway,” my voice is pinched from lack of air by the end. “Keep up.”

She shakes her head with an incredulous sound. “No wonder you understand David,” she mutters. “But back to the topic at hand. What’s the big secret?” A little look of worry crosses her face. _”Did_ she hurt you?” It takes everything I have not to growl audibly. “She hates everyone universally. But you spent hours, with her, _hours,_ and you weren’t even limping from cane welts after.”

“She also wouldn't see me for over two months.”

“Why?”

“Why is it so interesting?”

“Ask me that again after you’ve been here a few years,” she replies drily.

Which means what? That I’ll find out it’s really that boring here? That I’ll come to understand Baghra is just that unsociable? In any case, Genya obviously isn’t going to let this go, which means it isn’t _her_ curiosity that has her pressing the issue. Rather than stoke my temper further, though, the understanding just makes me tired. It also makes me wonder how I can want to slap someone upside the head so often when I see him so little.

I shrug a shoulder and turn away to pick up my tea. I take a generous drink before I answer. “We talked.”

“You… talked. With Baghra. All day.”

“She’s pissy and angry, Genya, not dull and inhuman.” Mostly, on that last one.

“But… with Baghra. You talked with Baghra. All day.”

“Did you break in the last three seconds? Yes, I talked with Baghra all day. About who and what I am, about what that means, about how royally fucked I am from every side, about how horribly wrong things could go and how everyone around me already wants to use me. Honestly, she didn’t actually say much, she just kind of listened. And looked at me like I was personally offensive and the very definition of hopeless and moronic.”

“...Hm,” she allows after a moment. “That does sound like her.”

And then I slip up.

“Because what?” I ask. “You figured I’d lie about it?”

Defensiveness is the most basic, beginner, inexcusably sloppy mistake you can make. Right up there with letting your emotions - resentment, for instance - boil over. To anyone paying attention, even just subconsciously, defensiveness is a big, glowing sign that says “Well, you caught me. Good game.” The minute you lose your calm, you lose the conversation. And I let myself get genuinely annoyed. Why? Because I cared.

It’s aggravating how much I remind myself of him sometimes. No, not aggravating. But I don’t have a word to properly express my frustration and consternation on the matter.

Genya looks at me closely. “Why would you think that was what I meant?”

I turn away and let my jaw tick. I let myself look vaguely annoyed, too, while I figure out how to play this.

“I… I’m sorry,” I huff. I make myself look like I’m deflating. “I overheard something, no I don’t want to talk about it, and it has me being a dick to one of the few people I can actually stand being around.” It’s flimsy at best, but I’m not exactly practiced at real-time, high-stakes duplicity.

“...I’m touched,” she says flatly. “Really.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat. And when explain this time, I can be sincere. The words are so hard to get out, in fact, that my speech is lurching. “I’m not good with feelings. With being vulnerable. At all. When I say I can stand being around you, what I mean is that I actually, genuinely like you.” A twinge of hurt that kindly disguises itself as anger stabs my chest. “I respect you. Most people, I just tolerate being around them because I know I have to. I don’t hate them or anything, there’s nothing wrong with them, I just… don’t care about them. At all, in any way. I mean not like… I understand they’re people, I care about them _that_ way, it’s just that personally….” I trail off and give a helpless little shrug and shake of my head. “But I like being around you. I’d feel that way about the Darkling if he weren’t so exhausting, about Ivan if he weren’t so confusing and such an overstuffed dick - ...Ew. I regret my phrasing. I'd feel that way about Baghra, too, if she weren’t... well… if her crunchy outer layer wasn’t so thick. She’s too sad and angry and tired and afraid for me to hope for anything more from her than tolerance.”

It’s a long moment before she speaks. “There is so much to say to that, I am honestly at a loss for where to start.” After another pause, she gets up, walks over to me, and bends over to hug my shoulders from behind. She gives me a fond peck on the hair, then rests the side of her head against mine. “So I’ll just say thank you. And I can stand being around you, too,” she adds, giving me a little squeeze before standing up.

“Of course you can,” I sniff. “I’m fucking delightful.”

She laughs. “You really need to stop swearing so much.”

“I’ve gotten better!”

She chuckles to herself and goes back to her tea.

 

* * * * *

 

I wonder if Ivan knows that the Darkling is _the_ Darkling. The Black Heretic. He’s working to solve the country’s problems, yes. But he’s also the man who caused them.

I doubt it; there would be no reason for the Darkling to tell his Second of the past, only of the future.

What would he make of it, I wonder?

 

* * * * *

 

Genya is leaning against the edge of the table, her arms folded over her front. This lie is starting to wear on her. The Darkling will have to be more judicious about pressing her to get information from Alina. It’s too important she be able to focus on her real job.

“She said all they did was talk,” she reports, then recounts what his Sun Summoner had said about her day with the old woman.

The information matches closely enough what he got from Baghra. What is interesting, though, is what Alina left out. Perhaps whatever had been said about him had been inconsequential, and Baghra had only been trying to bait him. Perhaps he had not come up at all - that would make more sense.

Perhaps he should make time for a trip to Alina’s childhood home. So many clues about a person can be found in their past, and the more he learns about her, the more he feels he is not seeing something. The more questions he’s left with. That itself is growing irksome enough, but it is an itch now too, to be around her, and the distraction is untenable. He has not so much as glanced in her direction lately, because when he does, he wants to pull her into his bedchamber and lock the door.

He is leaned back against a chest of drawers, one ankle hooked over the other. He realizes his hands are balled into fists where they are tucked under his folded arms. As he relaxes them, he also tucks away the anger. It is becoming more heated than it has been in over fifty years. He will master this as he has mastered everything else.

Genya’s brow furrows. “She said Baghra was sad. And afraid.”

“...But not why she thought so.” It is hardly a guess.

“No. But I’m not certain I’ll be able to look at her the same way for a while. Alina hasn’t been wrong about anyone yet. She can pick someone apart in three seconds, but sometimes she reminds me of David. Except she understands people instead of chemistry and physics.

“I’m positive someone did something to her to make her pull back from everyone,” his mind touches on the “brother” she mentioned, “but it might be more than that. Something fundamental.”

His eyes go distant. Her desire to remain alone is likely no more natural than his. She had said as much during one of their first conversations. A person will adapt - a unique person, driven apart by what they are, more so.

“She told me she doesn’t care about anyone. Literally, not at all. And I believe her. She would help someone if they needed it, but personally, she just wants everyone to stay away. Which makes me wonder why she likes having me around.”

It is eerie, the parallel Genya is unknowingly drawing. “No one wants to be truly alone, Genya.”

She looks down, thoughtful. When she gets where she needs to go, she shakes her head. “She said me, you, Ivan, and Baghra are the only people she thought she could enjoy being around. But she only tries to spend time with me because, and this is verbatim, you’re ‘exhausting,’ Ivan is ‘confusing and overstuffed,’ and Baghra has ‘a crunchy outer shell that’s too thick.’ That was when she went on to say she was scared and sad. Tired and angry, too, but those ones weren’t as surprising.” Her voice is wry underneath at the end.

He cants his head at her, just slightly. She has his curiosity now. “What else did she say about Baghra?”

“Just those. And ‘pissy.’”

He looks away as he takes the information in, tucks it away to look at once Genya is gone. “Would you like to tell me what it is that is bothering you now?”

Genya shifts and looks down. “The way she looks at me sometimes, it’s almost as if…. I know she doesn’t know I report to you, there’s no way she could. But I would swear she’s… she watches me, like she’s waiting for something to happen.”

He waits. It is not often she has to work her way up to something like this.

She can’t meet his eyes, and it takes palpable courage to say, “She told me you kissed her.”

This surprises him. If Alina wanted to talk about it, to boast, perhaps, it would have come up immediately. So why now?

“It was not planned, I assure you.” He does not fake the note of bitterness in his voice.

She says nothing for too long. He pushes off the dresser and moves to stands in front of her.

“Genya,” he says. He waits until she looks up. “I am not him,” he says, gentling his voice. “I will never be anything like him.”

“I know,” she says quietly. She is toying with the edge of one of her sleeves, eyes fixed on it.

He puts a hand over hers, stilling the motion, and watches the calm and certainty wash through her at the brief contact.

“Do you want to stop?” He already knows the answer. She, however, needs help getting there.

“It’s getting more difficult to lie to her,” she says. It comes out in a rush, shame and hurt in her voice. “I… care about her. She’s a good person. I wasn’t certain at first, but I think she really is.”

She has a fondness for misfits and outcasts. It is understandable.

Quietly, he tells her, “She said the same thing about you.”

Her eyes pinch closed.

“She said you have a good heart, and that you were strong enough to protect it. She knows how rare it is to find both of those things in a single person.”

With the cadence of a confession, she says, “The first time I went to speak to her about that day with Baghra, I found her in the kitchens. She was making the serfs inside laugh so loudly I could hear it through the door, and when I went in, she was covered in flour and batter and she was smiling. I’ve never seen her smile like that, her whole face was lit up.” She pauses. “She never takes time off, but she spent the day trying to recreate something she’d tasted once just because she thought I might like it. When this is over…. I….”

“You want to know if she’ll forgive you.”

She looks away. “Maybe.”

“She won’t.”

There is no surprise on her face, only sadness.

“Can’t we tell her?” It’s a plea, though she tries to hide it. “She hates them. She _despises_ them. She wants to see someone worthy in charge, and she obviously cares so much more for the way things should be that I don’t think she cares at all how they’re supposed to be. She would understand. I know she would.”

He lets her think he is considering. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she replies without hesitation.

“Certain enough to wager everything you’ve sacrificed?”

She does not have a ready answer to that.

“What about the people we lose to his arrogance and greed every day?”

She hesitates.

“Alina is strong. So is her sense of justice. But it is personal justice, and she is untested.” He sees her want to argue, and he watches her stop herself. “After everything you have been through, as close as we are to all of it being over forever, are you willing to risk it?” He asks, calm and level.

When she still doesn’t answer, he says, “You have a talent for seeing people, Genya, and you know her better than I do. Do what you think best.”

Her eyes snap up to him. “You can’t mean that,” she says. She’s watching him closely, trying to gauge what kind of test this is.

“You are as much a part of this as I am. You have suffered for it more than anyone.”

When she had been much younger, but already old enough that the King had begun to give her jewels, as if they made up for what he did to her, she had run to the Darkling, crying, begging to be taken away from the Palace, to never again be forced to wear the uniform of a servant. He had told her it was the uniform of a soldier.

_“If you tell me you cannot bear this, then I will send you from here and you need never wear those colors or walk the halls of the Grand Palace again. You will be safe, I promise you that.”_

_She had looked up at him. “Safe?”_

_“Safe. But I can promise you this, too: You are a soldier. You could be my greatest soldier. And if you stay, if you can endure this, one day all will know it.” He had lifted her chin with a finger. “Do you know the King once cut himself on his own sword?”_

_She had laughed, just a little. “He did?”_

_The Darkling had nodded, the barest grin playing over his lips. “He wears it constantly—just for show, mind you. He forgets it is not a toy by his side, but a weapon.” His face had grown serious. “I can promise you safety,” he had said. “Or I can promise to see your suffering repaid a thousandfold.” With the pad of his thumb, he had brushed a stray tear from beneath her eye. “You decide, Genya.”_

“My offer stands,” he says now. “As does my promise. The choice is yours to make.”

It may take the evening, but Genya will remember what is important to her, and what she can stand to sacrifice.

Her pain will be short-lived, in any case. As short as anyone else’s, here and gone before he turns around, all the more sharp and cutting for its urgency.

 

* * * * *

 

“You should try being less difficult, Starkov.” Ivan says blandly.

“I’m not difficult. _You_ are difficult.”

“Only to people who deserve it.”

“Ah, the joy of being among the unfortunate majority. Maybe I’ll drink to my luck tonight, get nice and shit-faced, cry into a pillow.”

“You need to rein in that mouth of yours. Act like a lady for five minutes. Who knows,” he says, snide, “you might actually like it.”

“The key word there is ‘act.’ I can pretend to be your aunt Gertrude, too, but unless I have to, why would I? Besides,” my tone goes purring, “you protest too much for someone who keeps ‘accidentally’ bumping into me so often.”

“Oh, I pray for relief every day.”

“I bet you do. Over your candle-lit shrine to the Darkling, for relief from this burning you get in your loins every time you think of me. That or you should really see a Healer. Does it burn when you pee, too?”

“Peasant,” he sneers.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than basic facts about my life, Ivan. For instance, if I were going for an observational insult about you, I’d point out that you’re a truly massive kiss-ass.”

“Arrogant.”

“Now you’re just mistaking me for a mirror.”

“Entitled.”

“Patently untrue. And you’re a terrible flirt.”

He goes red in the face and for a second, it almost looks like he’s choking.

“Oh calm your tits, Ivan, it was a joke. Surely even you have heard of them?” At the look on his face, I add sweetly, “If you don’t like the way I talk, maybe you should shut me up.”

For a moment, his face is so transparent I can all but read his mind. (The horror). ‘You can’t possibly mean what that sounded like.’

I don’t. He just makes it so much fun to screw with him. And so _easy._

I wink at him and walk away, saying over my shoulder, “Sweet dreams, Ivan.” The way I curl my voice around his name is positively obscene.

 

* * * * *

 

I want to point out to Genya, “You know he put you there. And you know he knew _exactly_ what the King was like when he did it.”

How has she excused that away?

But how does anyone excuse away horrific behavior? They do it because whatever lie they’re clinging to is more important. I hate it, personally, but it’s not to be decried; sometimes that’s just how people survive.

I don’t know if I can blame her for doing what was necessary to survive, mentally. But I absolutely can blame her for being that foolish.

When you know better, you do better. And when you figure it out, you fucking rescue yourself.

Then again, why would she? Why would she, when she had the chance to destroy the fucker who did it to her?

Problem is, she lets herself hate the symptom instead of the cause.

I find I can’t much blame her for that, either.

...Feelings are annoying.

 

* * * * *

 

For some time now, a Squaller named Emil has held a growing suspicion that everyone’s fear of the Sun Summoner is completely ridiculous. He is an older Grisha, over fifty, his hair just beginning to show silver, and has been stationed at the Little Palace for nearly two months now. More than enough time to form his own opinion.

True, she has no problem ordering around the Oprichniki or even, sometimes, Ivan. (He was there when she yanked him down to her height. It was so satisfying Emil almost got… well. That’s not really important, and it was hardly his fault, anyway. No one was sad to see the man taken down a peg.) She walks around as if she owns the Little Palace and every blade of grass on its grounds. So people assume she thinks she’s better than they are.

Emil, though, he thinks she’s actually just shy. She wouldn’t be the first person to try to hide it by puffing up to look bigger than she is. Rumors about where she came from abound, but of course he has access to information others don’t. From what he understands, she was a lowly Cartographer in the First Army when she was discovered. A peasant. A no one, small in every sense, who would always be a no one, who would die a no one.

She never looks at anyone. And it’s not well known, but it isn’t a secret either that she sneaks off to the stables and spends hours there with the horses. That she likes to be alone, that she prefers the company of a servant to that of the Grisha, that she almost has a personality around children. There’s even a rumor that she spent a day working in the kitchens, befriending the servants there. That one is preposterous, of course, but he’s so utterly convinced he’s right that he has hatched a plan to win her over, gain her confidence, and become a trusted friend. He doubts anyone but the woman, the Grisha servant from the Grand Palace, has even tried speaking to her. He has certainly never seen it.

So it is with his head full of images of the looks that are about to be on everyone’s faces that he approaches her on one of the rare occasions she’s settled in a plush, high-backed chair in the Main Hall. The servant hovers next to her on a seat pushed up against hers, like a fly looking for a place to land.

He softens his face and walks around to stand in front of her.

The servant looks up, curious, but the Sun Summoner does not. Not even when it’s obvious he’s waiting for her attention.

“Soverenyi,” he greets, and her eyes snap up to his instantly. He doesn’t recognize what’s in them, but he knows has every bit of her attention now. She has her chin lifted only as much as is strictly necessary to look at him. Someone else would call it arrogance. He simply sees an uncomfortable woman, out of place, unconsciously hiding her neck as if to protect from attack.

Emil is one of the more attractive Grisha, and has grown accustomed to the effect he has on people, especially otkazat’sya. The Sun Summoner has come to look decent enough, but she grew up among the weeds. So he gives her his most disarming smile, and the poor thing is so taken aback by his charm that she freezes and can’t even react.

[Here Emil gives her an overly personal speech that basically amounts to “Hey boo, I know you’re hurting, I want you to know I understand and you can come to me any of the times *pouty duckface to show he’s sympatico.* He ends it by reaching down, taking her hand, and giving it a little squeeze.]

When her gaze slides, unhurried, from their linked hands up to his face, Emil realizes he has made a grave miscalculation. Because there is nothing shy in the way she is looking at him. There is no gratitude or appreciation, no maidenly embarrassment. Her eyes, in fact, have become a void of warmth so absolute that he feels the heat sucked from his every muscle and vein. He tries to yank his hand back, but she twists her own and clamps down on it in a frightening display of strength for one so small.

What’s worse, the common area has gone silent.

In a low, calm, and utterly terrifying voice, she asks his name.

He lies.

Her eyes narrow fractionally. “Try again.”

He swallows thickly. At first he can’t get his vocal cords to work and has to clear his throat. “Emil, Soverenyi. Retvenko. One of the Darkling’s most--”

She leans in slowly, her eyes locked on his, and what he was about to say dies in his throat. He has no more power to even glance away than he does to remove his hand, which he believes she is now crushing. She stops and silently bids him close the distance, then beckons him closer still, until he is so near he can smell the clarity of her breath, hot like the source of her singular power.

So quietly he almost has to strain to hear, she says, “If you ever touch me again without my permission, Emil Retvenko, I will snap off every one of your fingers and feed them to a bird while you watch. Do you understand me?”

For the first time, Retvenko wonders if some of the more outlandish rumors about what she did for the First Army are true, because he knows, down to the core of him, that she means it.

He manages to nod.

“Good. And while we’re at it, I suggest you apply that friendly advice to all women in general.” She sits back and smiles, and it feels like his esophagus shrivels down to the size of a twig. Finally, _finally_ she releases his hand. “I’m not going to see you again in here, am I, Emil Retvenko?” Her tone is dulcet, but she still makes his name sound poisonous. And it isn’t a question, not the way she says it.

He shakes his head quickly to show that he understands.

“Good,” she repeats, and even close as he still is, he can barely hear it. She returns to her book as if he isn’t there. He takes the dismissal and straightens himself, then walks as quickly from the Hall as one can while still keeping a dignified pace, clutching his hand, the sound of whispering and sniggers and disbelief already following him.

That woman… there is no light in her eyes. He has seen the Darkling’s ire personally - he was not the subject of it, of course - and it had not left him feeling so cold as this.

 

* * * * *

 

“Feed them to a bird?” Genya asks, quiet enough that no one else will hear how hard she’s fighting not to laugh. “Really?”

I shrug. “It was the first thing that came to mind. Raptors are birds, and I didn’t say what _kind_ of bird. Besides, maybe now he thinks I’ll train a little flock of canaries to enjoy the taste of human flesh just for the occasion. He seems the self-important sort.”

“Oh, he is. The man is insufferable.”

“I take it that’s why I’m not getting a lecture?”

“Someone has needed to put him in his place for years. But….” Her voice turns serious. “You do realize no one is ever going to try to talk to you again now.” She pauses. “...I just made this into a positive, didn’t I?”

I smile, eyes on my book.

“...Why did you ask him his name?” Her voice is curious.

I turn and raise my brows at her, which makes her roll her eyes. “You know what I mean. You started learning the names of every Grisha who so much as passes through the Little Palace on your first day.”

“Third,” I correct blandly. "And the servants, too."

“You’re insufferable.”

“I’m delightful.”

After a moment of quiet, I sober and ask, as if it's merely a curiosity, and not an especially interesting one at that, "Genya, why did he call me Soverenyi?"

"Why shouldn't he?"

From the innocent way she asks that, I can assume that's what everyone calls me.

I don't answer. I don't know why, but this development makes me uneasy.

 

* * * * *

 

I can’t figure out why he pushed so hard for Alina to have all three amplifiers.

If it had gone to plan without Morozova’s last surprise, Alina would have been able to crush the Darkling like a bug. He already had her for eternity with just the one amplifier - and easier to control. There is no universe in which any part of him really wants the Shadow Fold destroyed, and she could do that with three amplifiers. Maybe he was an idiot and thought that with god-like power she’d “see reason” where she had failed to before. He sees the world and everyone in it in the language of power after all. Maybe he thought she could just stop it from expanding. Place control of it back into his hands.

He does so love control. Classic hallmark of a man posturing around a core of fear. I don’t blame him for it, no, but it’s still true.

If he had a point of idiocy, it was certainly his expectations of her despite all the times she spit in his face.

Dumbass.

Her, not him.

No wonder he crossed that last line and burned the orphanage. And yet he thinks he can control an entire Goddamned _world_ where he couldn’t control one single woman.

Idiot. Really. For a genius immortal, he’s a Goddamned idiot.

Maybe pushing for the trinity was his way of having merzost. He’d made the Fold. He could make his nichevo’ya. But those weren’t merzost, not really. They were twisted things. Abominations, like Baghra so often said. Farcical, deformed versions of the purity that must be the soul of all things.

...It’s a little shocking to me to think that after everything he would do, he can be so… emotional. No. Idyllic?

It’s something to file away for later.

I’ll need it.

 

* * * * *

 

I start stealing the Darkling’s oprichniki late at night.

I go to the guards outside his door, “request” one, then take them out to the western stables and tell them to beat me up, more or less. Then I inform them that if they so much as consider going easy on me, I’ll tell the Darkling they tried to kiss me. I say it with just enough of a smile that they can’t _quite_ figure out if I’m serious.

This extra training turns out to be a great call, because I get my ass absolutely handed to me without exception. It takes me three weeks of doing this almost nightly to land my first real hit; the Darkling’s guard is exceptional at hand-to-hand combat, as it turns out, and they have a fighting style unlike anything Botkin has taught us. His classes are about self-defense. The Oprichniki fight not to incapacitate or escape, but to subdue and kill.

I get a different person almost every night, but a few of them repeat often enough that after a while, they start gaining the confidence to offer me pointers and corrections. By that point, I’m ninety-nine point nine percent certain they’ve figured out I’m full of shit when it comes to my threats, and have likely spread that information to the entire guard, but, either because I’m amusing, a curiosity, dressed in black, or some combination of the three, they continue to humor me.

I take advantage, too, and learn what I can about them. Names, faces, trivia. One of the men, Korsov, has a secret fondness for good Shu rice wine, for instance. So after one night when he teaches me a pressure point that will paralyze a person for at least five seconds, I have a bottle sent to him on the sly.

It irks me that the Darkling undoubtedly found out about all of this from the first night, but no one says anything to me, so I can pretend, in my own little nighttime world, that at least this part of my life is my own.

 

* * * * *

 

Finally, _finally_ I figure out where to bump into Vasily. (Protip: kitchen staff universally know where everyone important is going to be throughout the day). It takes several days of learning his routines, but that will come in handy later.

Alina was right. He’d be handsome if it wasn’t for the chin he’d gotten from his father. Which is disgusting. Him being good-looking, I mean, not the chin.

I hook him the same way a common man would hook a beautiful woman: by playing on the fact that he’s used to everyone kissing up to him.

When he gets genuinely confused by my behavior, he tries to correct the situation. He straightens formally and says, “We have not been introduced. I am Vasily Lantsov, First Son of Ravka.” His face is already groomed into satisfaction and magnanimous forgiveness in preparation for my mortification.

Instead, I look at him as though I find him ridiculous and am trying hard to hide that fact. “Yes, I know who you are, sire. I _was_ in your military for a ‘few’ years. And I do live in your country.”

When his look turns to bewilderment, I cant my head and remark as if pleasantly surprised, “Your chin is really quite fetching when you are taken off-guard, Your Majesty.” He is exactly as arrogant and entitled as his father, which means he is acutely aware of every one of his flaws.

He doesn’t know what to do with a peasant behaving as if she were nearly his equal, or with an insult phrased as a compliment, or an unknown woman being so forward. So he chooses another tack. “...Yes,” he says, stiff and apparently irked. Which is fine. I’ve buried hooks under his annoyance that will fruit later. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with the Fjerdan Ambassador I must attend to.” ‘I’m too important for this and also you suck, haha.’

He sketches a bow that could hardly be called polite and bustles away, posture textbook perfect to show just how Important he is. But all a behavior like that does is announce your insecurity. If you have to _try_ to look like something, that’s exactly what you’re not.

It’s good that he hurries off, though. Because an idea has occurred to me that has me losing control of my face as it goes slack.

Fjerda.

_Matthias._

A chance to fix something my presence here will disturb.

I hadn’t even thought of…. But Vasily just handed me a boulder, and three birds to kill with it.

So now it’s back to the kitchens. I have an Ambassador to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the DL/Genya scene, snippets and the flashback borrowed from “The Tailor,” Bardugo’s short about Genya. It’s so good. So _informative._ *_*
> 
> I took ooc liberties with Retvenko, I know this.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 8/14/18: Added a tiny blurb at the end of the post-Retvenko scene remarking on the use of "Soverenyi"  
> 8/15/18: Took out references to requests on Alina's time in the first scene becauuuuuse apparently I wrote about that long ago!


	16. And Then The Bitch Came Back

For over three months, I’ve been meditating intensely every day. Sometimes all I manage is a half hour, but usually it’s much more - I’m driven in this. Baghra puts me through her stretches and feeds me her herbal concoctions (which I’m pretty sure are useless, but I’m not going to turn anything down). She exercises me in everything from muscle and stamina to breathing and mental focus and clarity.

Will is not to be discounted. Neither is drive. But sometimes, no matter how hard you work at a thing, it just won’t happen until it’s time. That’s the only rationale I can come up with for why, after so much work, I’m sitting in the forest one evening and the world just... cracks open.

I fall into the fissure like a rag doll tossed over a seaside cliff.

What I wanted was to be able to see everything. I can now, but that’s not what this really is. It’s that suddenly, I _am_ everything.

 

* * * * *

 

More than anything, enlightenment seems to be the carrot at the right end of the stick. It’s a glimpse, maybe of something bigger, maybe of something you can achieve some day, but either way, it’s a temporary thing. It isn’t a finish line. So at first, I’m afraid this new connection will fade with the high. That whatever had me gunked me up in the first place will swell and block everything up. But it doesn’t.

I’m just... awake. I am hundreds, maybe thousands of times bigger than my body, and at any given moment, I can step outside of it and see everything the light does.

It’s _mine._

But that’s not right. It’s like saying my skin is mine, or the cells that make up my body, the electrical impulses that fire in my brain, or that the thing in ourselves we call a soul is “mine.” Objectively, sure, you could argue that, but it would be a stupid argument. Because those things aren’t _yours,_ they’re _you,_ just like the blue doesn’t “belong” to the sky or wetness to water.

The only truly accurate words I can find for the change are simply, “I Am.”

This has its limit, just like anything else, just like any other muscle, but all that seems to be is distance. Within a certain radius - a massive swath that almost fills the entire open area of the Little Palace grounds when I can concentrate - I can be everywhere, and inside of everything.

 

* * * * *

 

“Nina.”

When the young woman turns around and sees it’s me who has asked for her, her face goes white. She’s standing among a gaggle of red-robed friends near the wide doorway leading out of the training room, a piece of hay still stuck in her hair from an impressive blow she took during a sparring session. She’s fourteen and just on the cusp of true adolescence. Give her a year and she’ll already be stunning. Well, in a different way. She’s Grisha, and she’s Nina - she’s _already_ already stunning. Her energy permeates the air around her and colors her skin, fills her eyes.

Her friends are looking between the two of us as if I am Death itself come to call. Apparently I’m something of a boogeyman among my own people. I’m ok with that. It makes them leave me alone, and the ones close to me will know better.

Nina swallows visibly, but walks forward, doing a good job of pretending she’s not running through everything she’s done in the last month, trying to find something she could be in trouble for. Or what I could possibly have heard about, at least. She _is_ a teenager. And Nina.

“Soverenyi,” she greets with deference and a shallow, hasty little dip of a curtsy. Her voice is young yet, but clear and lovely.

That title again. It’s disconcerting.

“She’ll catch up to you,” I say benignly to her group, not looking away from the young woman. She’s half a head shorter than me. I don’t suppose it will last long.

Now that we’re in relative privacy - the others in her class are shuffling out with almost comical slowness and trying very hard not to seem like they’re straining to hear every word - my expression has gone friendly. “You enjoy languages, right?” I ask.

“Yes,” she replies uncertainly.

“Have you begun studying Old Ravkan, by chance?”

Her nose wrinkles before she can help herself, but she catches it and schools her face into order. It’s hard to keep from smiling.

“Only a little,” she tells me.

“How little?”

She’s looking at me with curiosity and confusion now. “I’m better with Kaelish and Kerch. My Fjerdan is passable, and I’ve been studying Shu and Zemeni on my own, but Old Ravkan....”

I smile at her. “Please speak freely.”

She looks at me, probably trying to decide if this is some sort of trap, but errs on the side of bold, which pleases me to no end - that’s the Nina I’m after.

“It’s stuffy,” she says.

I nod and purse my lips as if making a great effort to consider something. “So if I asked you to, say, help me translate something that was written in stodgy Old Ravkan, do you think you could do it?”

She blinks at me. “I… maybe? There are older Grisha who are fluent in it though, Soverenyi. People at the Grand Palace, too, or priests.”

I nearly shudder at the mere mention of the Apparat, indirect or no. “Darling, if I wanted an older Grisha who was fluent in it, I would have gone to one. That isn’t what I asked. Can _you?_ You have a gift for languages. I’d like to think a little challenge like this would hardly be beyond your ability.” I make it sound just challenging enough.

She takes the bait and straightens. Which is impressive because her posture is fantastic. “I could. It… would take time, and I can’t promise how accurate my translation would be. But I could.”

 _Good girl,_ I croon silently. Now I have an excuse not only to make her acquaintance, but to kiss up to her by giving her a chocolate souffle when my new friends in the kitchen finish their wizardry and figure it out. Call Grisha steel and lumiya impressive all you want so long as you don’t talk to me about leaveners and binding proteins and the moistening power of sugar. My day in the kitchen made me exquisitely glad my job is to wrangle an ancient, amoral man with god-like power, and not to bake things. Or probably cook in general.

“Excellent,” I say. “Meet me near the tunnel tomorrow after dinner. We’ll be taking a trip to the Grand Palace.” I already know her schedule, and that she has nothing else she has to do tomorrow night. “We’ll have guards with us, but they pretty much just stand around looking constipated. By which I of course mean professional, focused, and very dedicated.”

Her lovely green eyes are wide, and she looks like she can’t figure out if I’m a lunatic, if she’s just had a stroke, or if I really did just make a jest. And if I did, is she supposed to laugh, or would that cost her a finger or something? I don’t know what terrifying Sun Summoners are rumored to do when someone displeases them, and all sorts of fun stories about what I ended up doing to Retvenko have been flying around lately.

“...Maybe keep that last part to yourself,” I say as I walk past her with a wink and a friendly pat on the shoulder.

 

* * * * *

 

Before our first night in the Grand Palace library is over, Nina starts to come out of her shell and bloom into that vivacious creature I know and adore. It takes time for her to really get there, but before long we’ve built up a comfortable enough rapport. Friendly, I might even call it, at least in private. It probably helps that I take to giving her conspiratorial little hellos when I see her on the grounds. A grin, a wink, a low-key waggle of fingers.

I wish I could prompt her to focus on Fjerdan, but even so much as working in a casual mention of how I adore the language (I couldn’t actually care less either way) or any other thing, no matter how subtle, to try and steer her interest is something that could come back to bite me in the ass in the next few months, if all goes to plan.

Our project does take time, as she warned, but I finally get an answer to one of the more uncooperative questions I’ve had.

Census information only tends to record the very basics: dates of birth, and dates and causes of death. In the cases of especially important individuals, details of appearance will be noted too. Hair and eye color, things like that. But in a book written before the process became more organized - which is why, I assume, it was never translated - I find notes from a royal physician.

Ravka’s Kings don’t have a habit of dying early, no. But apparently there is an affliction so common to the Lantsov line that it hasn’t merited comment in any modern account: once they’ve passed the prime of their lives and had a chance to produce healthy heirs - thus keeping the line of succession stable - they tend to fall into a chronic illness so overpowering that they spend the rest of their days ruling as virtual invalids.

Genya came up with her poison for the King. Or at least I thought she did, because _she_ thought she did. But for someone as old and smart and experienced as Aleksander, planting an idea in someone else’s head and making them think they came up with it on their own is likely old hat. Either that, or the option I think more likely, varying the poison from generation to generation just enough to keep it from seeming artificial.

I have to hand it to him that it’s actually incredibly brilliant. When a King dies, the line of succession runs its natural course and a new ass sits on the big chair. But if a King simply falls ill, too ill to tend to any but the most ceremonial of duties, who but the de facto second in command should step in to help pick up the slack? He already knows the ins and outs of the court, he has relationships with the dignitaries and nobles, knowledge of military and resource management, and he’s a well known quantity.

Lividity simmers deep under my skin, but it doesn’t catch, and I know it’s not going to. Despicable? Possibly. Probably. But the fact is that that his selfish, jackass meddling is probably the only reason Ravka has survived as long as it has. And in the periods during which its monarchs have fallen infirm, the country has seen increased military victories and more secure borders, less strained royal coffers, reduced corruption, decreased poverty....

I hate him. I hate him _so much._ I hate him because of how badly I _want_ to hate him and the fact that, fuck it all, I’m not good enough at lying to myself to sell it. I don’t like his methods because there is something inherently selfish in him. Because he feels he is owed this. I can’t blame him for that, not with the little I know about his life, and I certainly can’t argue with what he does with power when he has it. God knows, too, that I’m the last person who will call someone on “The ends justify the means” reasoning. Because they do. Not always, but when done right and under the correct stakes, they absolutely do. Only a morally tepid child would argue otherwise, and morality for the sake of morality is a waste of time.

...There’s also the fact that I’m currently plotting a murder and don’t feel especially bad about it.

I just have to stop the Darkling from wiping out a town of people in the pretty much the most hellish way possible, and we can go from there. He’s been alone a long time, and with what his powers are, he can’t _ask_ for anything. He has to take it by force. I just have to find a way to… I don’t even know. I have to find an alternative and convince him it’s the better option.

...I suppose that means we should start bonding.

Except I really don’t want to do that. He makes me… itchy.

The Darkling is the one who screwed Ravka over in the first place. That’s true. But to my knowledge, he also hasn’t tried anything so colossally, horrifyingly stupid since whatever lunacy created the Shadow Fold.

No. Instead, he just started waiting for me.

It’s all information to have, anyway. Another shard of another of the thousand or so puzzle pieces I spend much of my time rooting around for in secret.

I’m finding more and more that I need them as much as I would need water after two days wandering the desert, because the closer I get to him, the harder it is to tell what’s real.

I’ve been wanting to talk to Genya about that very thing, in fact. His “draw.” I didn’t think I had another option; I sure as shit wasn’t going to broach the subject with Ivan. It occured to me I could ask Baghra, and I felt terribly smart for coming up with that. Except now I realize I don’t need to ask anyone, because I already know the answer.

Magnetism isn’t a Grisha power. It does, though, come with confidence. Like the sort you’d get by being frighteningly intelligent, surviving untold pain and horror with a straight spine in tact, and having hundreds of years of command under your belt. As old as Aleksander is, I doubt there is anything that can either surprise him, or that he can’t at least pretend not to be surprised about.

Aside from the person you’ve been pinning all your hopes and dreams on for hundreds of years fighting you at every turn while you’re trying to stage a coup. But really, that’ll tax anyone.

So no, the Darkling’s pull isn’t supernatural. But it is particular to Grisha, which only proves the theory. Otkazat’sya fear him too much to let it in, and on top of everything else, he is a symbol to our kind of every hope we can dare to have in the world. He is safety. Our savior, alive and in the flesh. An example of everything Grisha might some day be. Too deadly to be venerated, but just deadly enough to basically be a walking archetype of Protector and Pack Leader. Someone worth following, worth respecting, worth trusting. Worth putting faith in. And the Apparat wasn’t wrong about faith being one of the very strongest forces in the world. In practical application and on a public scale, he’s right about it being _the_ strongest. Faith makes miracles and happen. The impossible.

I feel better having that figured out, because that pull of his affects everyone, and me? I happen to be the focus of his attention, his want, his need and hunger. I’m a woman, with the base instincts of a woman, and if the Alpha of Alphas who has hundreds of years of practice at seduction and manipulation isn’t already completely obsessed with me, he’s well on his way.

So I get a little weak in the knees around him. It’s understandable, especially given how on alert I already am whenever he’s near. But now that _I_ understand, now that the problem has a face and a name, it gives me something to work with.

I fucking need it.

 

* * * * *

 

It’s months away from the heart of winter, but the blanket of snow is already ceaseless. We have a Fjerdan who tops out at the better part of seven feet. Whenever I’m near him I feel like a doll and I love it. On some parts of the grounds that are unmanicured and left more or less to the wilds, it’s deep enough that he could jump into a snowbank and vanish.

It gives me an idea for a new training exercise, so I pay a visit to the Fabrikator workshops. While I’m in there, David is examining something fixedly through a loupe. One of the plates of food I’ve insisted he be brought three times a day is sitting next to him untouched.

The next day, I get a summer kefta delivered to my room. It’s thin and molten and hugs my skin like a satin gown. I had the neckline modified so the entire expanse my shoulders will be bared to the unforgiving teeth of early Ravkan winter.

It becomes the only thing I wear.

The relationship between light and heat is incredibly complex. Sometimes intuitive, sometimes not. By a certain view, they’re exactly the same thing; where one exists, so does the other, and each can be created by its counterpart. At the most simple, this idea expresses itself by the fact that certain wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum - my stomping ground as the Sun Summoner - will present themselves as heat long before they do so as visible light.

Essentially, now that my biggest immediate goal has been accomplished, I can spare a little more time to comb through the subtler parts of what I can do. I need to be practiced and comfortable with them; the more versatile I can be - and the more _effortlessly_ I can do that - all the better. I can think of no better motivation for this one than not literally freezing to death every time I go outside. Or walk too near a window.

 

* * * * *

 

“Rumor will do more than royal proclamation.” Nikolai will say something like that to me if he gets it into his head that I need a crash course on high-profile leadership. Put in more broad terms: “If you really want to plant an idea in someone’s head, don’t let them know you’re doing it.”

The applications of this principle are far-reaching. You could use it to, say, make a boorish peasant woman seem irresistible, or an evil Grisha more curiosity than _demjin._ Which is why I’ve been doing a good deal of acting lately. As two or three people at once.

I walk carpeted halls and group in corners as palace staff. I murmur in the background as nobles or courtesans too unimportant to remember at gatherings in parlors for after-dinner drinks, or discussions of the latest exciting hunt, or whatever other asinine excuses rich people come up with to stand around doing nothing as much as possible.

At first I’m positive I’ll be caught, of course. But it’s a fear I know is preposterous, so I make myself do it anyway - especially the social gatherings. Each time, my heart thuds a little less violently, my adrenaline pours out a little less readily, my brain functions a little more normally, and I come away with information on customs and finer points of etiquette you can’t learn from books. If nothing else, wandering around unseen among groups of catty rich people in social situations, particularly in a country everyone knows is barely treading water, quickly produces an extensive collection of useful trivia. I’d say it would be enough to make even Kaz blush, but that would literally be the dumbest thing I could ever say in my life.

Here’s how this works:

If you tell someone something, particularly something that goes against an idea they’ve accepted or a belief they hold, they throw up a wall in their mind so the information can’t get through. They don’t even know they’re doing it. It’s a way we keep our belief structure in tact, and belief structures are vital to our operating systems and, frankly, sanity.

If, however, a person happens to overhear something not even meant for them, the information has a way of worming into their brain. If they hear it enough, or even just in the right way, it puts down roots, and not the kind you can dig up easily.

Repetition causes something else to work against them, too: our instincts as social animals. If the same information keeps reaching them in different times and places and from different sources, logically that must mean it’s something pretty much everyone knows. Believe it or not, the power of popular belief or action is so effective at swaying a person, even at getting them to behave in a way that’s completely out of character, it can quite literally be horrifying in the wrong hands. Genocides, child armies and brides, systems of brutality, these don’t happen because hundreds of thousands of people up and say “Hey, this sickening thing sounds like a super good idea, let’s do that.” Those kinds of things are more complicated than this one principal, of course, but there’s a reason popular movements pick up followers at an exponential rate of return.

We don’t think about these things as they apply to ourselves. They’re the proverbial water that we, the fish, aren’t aware of. We can’t process everything consciously, and that’s what makes them so incredibly powerful. We can’t stop to question our every instinct and impulse and need and want. We would literally go mad. If you understand enough about the way these systems that automate so much of what we do and think literally every minute of our lives work, you can pretty much get anyone to do anything.

It also helps if you know how to train animals - the basic principles all work in human application with almost no adjustment.

All of these things are why a remark made in confidence between two servants standing near a bouquet of flowers or walking down a flight of stairs, about how lovely and elegant the Sun Summoner is becoming, can be criminally effective. So can off-handed mentions of a temperament that directly conflicts the rude behavior you experienced from her.

Excited or even scandalized whispers about the obscene number of proposals coming in - especially the one where the Second Son is already having a ring commissioned from a top jeweler in Ketterdam in anticipation of meeting her - translate into a jab with an electrified poker.

A nameless Officer may speak with contained awe, disapproval, or even a little concern of the populace’s growing regard for her, the loyalty and hope her existence is seeding in the country and towns and cities, the influence she has when she hasn’t so much as set foot among them yet.

A few grains of sand, if wedged into the right place, will become a consuming distraction.

Vasily is the easy nut to crack. All I need is his desire for my company (God help me), and as vapid, arrogant, shallow, and rampantly insecure as he is, it’s child’s play. It doesn’t take two weeks before a servant in cream and gold is bringing me a gift, a token of his esteem with his regrets for the “hurried nature” of our first meeting and the hope that we may more properly make one another’s acquaintance soon.

The Darkling happens to see this.

I pretend I don’t realize he’s there.

When I accept the gift, I am openly hesitant and even put on a show of politely contained distaste as I give my thanks. Accepting it gives Vasily his in, and acting annoyed about it guarantees the itch stays fresh.

I’m going to have to entertain a meeting with the First Son, which is disgusting. But it only has to be once. That will be enough to hook him for what I have in mind next. And _if_ it comes up with the Darkling, it’s simple enough to plead “You people are always telling me to be less of a jackass, and he’s literally going to be King.”

The Fjerdan Ambassador, though… he takes more work. First I have to learn about him without anyone knowing I’m trying to learn about him. Then there’s the fact that he’s rarely at the Palace. In the end, though, I realize that’s for the best - his walls will be more challenging than Vasily’s in every conceivable way. He’d find anything he overheard in enemy territory suspect, unless he’s a moron, and I don’t get the impression he is. If the few people of his who remain in the court full-time report such things, however....

Like I said. People are more receptive to a thing when they think they’re not even supposed to hear it.

It’s an ungainly process, but I do something right, because it doesn’t take a month before the Darkling intercepts a formal request from the Ambassador for an introduction on his next visit in three week’s time. Which I only find out about, and can thus harass him pitilessly over until he tentatively agrees to let me attend, through still more roundabout maneuvering.

From there it’s easy to get Vasily to insert himself and to suggest the event be expanded into an informal meal. To make me more comfortable, of course. Wouldn’t want to leave me alone with the scary important man or overwhelm me with too many pieces of cutlery.

Sometimes, in distant, flippant parts of my mind, I just want to burn the world and be done with it.

 

* * * * *

 

There’s a saying: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Put a different way: “Plan for everything to go wrong.”

I wouldn’t say _everything_ goes wrong, certainly not. It’s just that the Darkling, for whatever reason, doesn’t care for the idea of my luncheon with Vasily and the Ambassador.

He dislikes it so much, in fact, that he is not satisfied by my suggestion that I take a guard with me. Not even if they’re Oprichniki. Or Heartrenders.

No. The Darkling will be attending personally.

Is he jealous? Suspicious of something? Does he want to gravely insult the Ambassador? This isn’t so he can work his own angle, I know that, because there are much less ham-handed ways to do that. I’m never going to know the answer, though, because the asshole is inscrutable.

And he keeps _looking_ at me too much.

All I can do is hope some perfectly-timed emergency calls him away from the capitol in a few weeks.

 

* * * * *

 

As Baghra watches her make her way back to the boy’s palace under cover of night, she voices a thought about the girl. A musing. “You might not be useless.”

They’re all more or less infants, people. They were even when Baghra was young by their standards. But this girl has no sense of identity, no place or history to ground her, and she knows everyone around her is little more than a potential enemy or a potential tool, if they’re anything at all. She’s not so hard as that, not exactly. She has that over the boy. But it’s close.

She knows she’s not one of them, and that she never will be. She works harder than anyone Baghra has ever seen, too, often past the point she’s been left bloodied by the effort, visible or no. Then she gets up again the next day and does it, without fail.

She understands what’s at stake.

Yet whoever she is, this girl hasn’t once come to Baghra crying for understanding or companionship. She was right about more than she knew that first day, and one thing in particular: man is not meant to be alone, not really. Baghra had done her best to push that loneliness out of her son by necessity, out of a misguided sense of love, but she wonders what might have gone differently if she hadn’t. She doesn’t often indulge such pointless thoughts, but one can’t help but wonder sometimes.

The girl doesn’t yet see the fissures her isolation has begun to make in her, but they’re there. What will she do once she begins to realize?

Well away from the lake, the whelp calls back, “Careful, Baghra, or I’ll get cocky.” She must be making fast progress learning to read lips.

Baghra makes a disgusted noise and returns to the warmth of her hut.

 

* * * * *

 

Genya groans quietly next to me at our place near the massive fireplace in the Main Hall.

“What?” I ask absently, eyes on my book. “Should I set something on fire? Did you remember an appointment with what’s her face?”

She gives a little laugh, but replies quietly, and sourly, “An old friend. She got in this morning. I thought I might avoid her a little longer, but apparently my luck has run out.”

Suddenly I am a deer in the middle of a field who has caught the edge of a worrying scent.

I knew this had to be coming any day. But changes ripple in unpredictable ways, and I’ve allowed myself to entertain a hypothetical reality where I never have to lay eyes on her again. I reach out on my light and-- yes, there she is. A grade-A bitch housed in near-perfection and clothed in midnight blue wool.

I “watch” Zoya make rounds, two other Etherialki flanking her as she smiles and chats with such a mockery of affection that I have to pull myself in, lest the fire react to my temper and try to swell out of the hearth.

I turn a page in my book, reading utterly abandoned, and ask blandly, “Does this force of pure evil have a name?”

“Zoya. A Squaller. One of the Darkling’s favorites.”

I hum thoughtfully. “Curly black hair, disgustingly beautiful, walks around like she defecates sunlight and rainbows?”

I don’t have to look up to see Genya’s surprise.

“You know her?” She asks.

“We’ve met,” I say with an acidic smile.

Something like a grin curls its way slowly over Genya’s lips. She leans in. “Then you’ll love this. She spent time in Kribursk recently - I’m guessing while you were there?”

“Sharp as always, my darling.”

“Stuff it or I won’t tell you.”

“Way to laugh in the face of that stereotype that redheads are temperamental, Genya. Really though, hurry up, because she’s about to make a B-line for us.”

“How do you--”

“Later. Focus.”

She purses her lips, but goes on. “Apparently a First Army soldier there caught her eye, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”

I snap so quickly from nausea to disbelief that for a moment, I can’t form a thought.

I raise my brows as if intrigued.

“She got him into bed, of course,” Genya says, and I try not to let my heart crawl its way up out of my mouth, “but it took her _weeks._ She’s not used to people turning her down, and an otkazat’sya?” She makes a hissing noise of pain. “And then, _then,”_ she leans in further, quieting to a whisper and her eyes practically lit from within, “after all that work? He said _someone else’s name_ right in the middle.”

I _gape_ openly over at her.

“Whose?” I whisper with more intensity than I mean to.

“Whose what?”

_“Whose name?”_

She raises her perfect auburn brows.

“I’m sorry if I’m not focusing on the right part of her crippling humiliation,” I hiss--

But _hell,_ Zoya is now heading straight for us. “How much of me will she be able to see from behind the chair?” She won’t deign to walk around it.

“The top of your head, depending on how close she stand--” Her head snaps up and goes warm and delighted. “Zoya! Its been so long, welcome back!” She rises and embraces the other woman.

I close my eyes and allow cool detachment to swell over everything else.

“It must have been such a delight to see a proper bed again,” Genya is effusing, “I heard you looked positively haggard when you arrived.”

My lips twitch.

“Not at all! We set an intense pace, the Darkling wanted me here as soon as possible, but it felt so good to wash the road off. I missed proper baths,” she sighs dreamily. “But....” she quiets her voice as if I’m deaf or dumb and can’t make out what’s being said three feet from the back of my head. “Is this…?”

Geyna holds a hand out toward me. “The Sun Summoner.” You could call her tone warm, or respectful. Or you could call it the sonic version of a cat twitching its tail while it watches a bird slowly hop closer.

I raise my hand above the back of the chair and give a little wiggle of my fingers.

Confusion flashes over Zoya’s face. So does consternation.

“I’m so glad to finally be introduced,” she tries. “I was there when you were discovered in Kribursk, but of course you didn’t have a chance to meet anyone. You were in such a terrible state, you were all anyone could talk about afterward.”

“I do often find injuries to be much more titillating than myths and legends showing up in the flesh. People love to talk, anyway.” I turn a page in my book, just loudly enough to be audible.

“I was seated at the feet of the Darkling,” she says “casually.” She eyes Edward and continues, “so I saw everything. I was amazed you managed to summon at all, given your state. It’s a miracle you survived.” Her joy is truly moving.

“I was traveling with an exceptional Corporalki. Fedyor Kaminsky, if you’d like to send flowers. Daffodils, maybe. He strikes me as the sort to have a secret love of daffodils. They’re just so… _happy._ Ivan would have managed just fine, but I imagine he was happy to be spared the experience.”

“Oh I know Fedyor, of course.” She flips her hair with a hand. Is she fourteen? “He’s talented enough, but I always found him a little too simple for my tastes.”

I am in a magical place where everything that would normally make me angry instead presses me deeper into a calm detachment.

“Actually,” she goes on, her voice musing, “I think we have someone else in common, too, now that you mention it. I met him in Kribursk, a tracker.”

Genya goes still.

Zoya, oblivious, turns to the groupie flanking her on the left and asks, “The famous one, what’s his name? Oh, of course. Mal Oretsev.”

Her casual use, familiar of the nickname  _almost_ gets me.

Genya goes from still to rigid, and I think it safe to assume she has now more or less put enough together to understand why I was so interested in what name might have been on the lips of Zoya’s bedmate. She opens her mouth to redirect the Squaller and avoid the eruption of a small, brown-haired volcano, but I beat her to it.

“He’s always been charismatic,” I remark conversationally. The only annoyance I feel is knowing that I was sloppy enough to have just handed the Darkling a piece of information I didn’t want him to have. “Makes friends everywhere he goes.” My voice turns musing. “Never does keep them very long though, for some reason. Not the women, anyway. Well, except me. But he obviously liked you just fine, too, if you spent so much time together.”

Genya is looking between Zoya and I, wary and confused.

I turn another page, this one not loud enough to hear.

“It seemed that way,” Zoya agrees. The ire is building in her eyes, either over the fact that I haven’t done her the courtesy of standing and facing her, or because I’m not giving her the satisfaction of taking the fat, wriggling bait she keeps dangling in front of my nose. “We got to know one another very well during my time there. I found him very… attentive,” she finishes.

“That’s Mal,” I say.

“He must have really felt the loss of his old friend, given how jealously he guarded any time with me. Then again, sometimes it’s the oldest things that can hold us back, don’t you think? You’ve moved up in the world since leaving him behind. Perhaps he was eager for something new, too. One does get tired of the same thing after too long. All his time spent the way it was, day after day, held back by the same thing.” She pauses, then covers with, “The same occupation, I mean. Maybe he found himself wanting a taste of something less… rustic.”

I _laugh._ I can’t help it. This bitch right here… if she were more tempered and less ham-handed, God help me, I think I might actually like her.

“Water through a sieve, indeed,” I say quietly to myself. If I were the other Alina, I’d be in a pool on the floor right now.

I close my book and set it next to my tea on the square, carved little table at my side. I rise from the chair and turn to Zoya. The look on her face when she takes in the black enrobing me is a memory I will take to my grave, no matter how long I live.

“Did we have an appointment?” I ask.

She stutters to regain herself, and not just from my kefta - she’ll find a way to make that inconsequential soon, if she isn’t already. When she recovers, she tells me, “As one of the Darkling’s most favored Grisha, I thought we should be introduced. We don’t usually operate on such formality here.”

“Ah.” I pause as if thinking. “How long have you been away?” I ask, brow scrunched.

“I can understand your confusion. I certainly hope I haven’t done anything to add to it. The Little Palace does seem abuzz. There’s even something new in the air. I don't find it agreeable, personally, but I’m certain everything will find its way back to its proper place when the season changes, as it always does.”

Is she even trying anymore? She’s pretty, she’s powerful, she has status. I think it safe to assume she’s just used to everyone putting up with her crap, and either she’s gotten lazy, or she’s just always been this sloppy.

I move around to lean against the side of the chair and turn a smile on the Squaller. “That’s the thing about the air, Zoya of the Darkling’s most favored Grisha. It couldn’t care less whether it agrees with you or not.” I shrug gracefully and add, “It’s just air.”

She smiles back. “Fortunately I’m a Squaller. When something in it doesn’t agree with me, I can just blow it away.”

My smile turns into a grin. “I’m sure you’re positively invaluable during allergy season.”

“My talents have always lent themselves more to the battlefield than the gardens. But that’s the thing about Squallers. We’re adaptable. We can face any sort of challenge and come out on top.”

Now I’m showing teeth, and I can only think of three people who might see that it’s not completely guileless and genuine. “Charming as this has been, my free time is at a premium, and this brief respite has now been used up. Away I must go to waggle my fingers and save people from empty lanterns and damp fireplaces.” I push off the chair.

Somehow managing to make it seem organic, Zoya reaches out in an offer and expectation of an embrace. I indulge her without hesitation, though I don’t return the gesture.

Genya’s eyebrows shoot clean into her hairline, and no fewer than twenty heads are gawking in our direction.

Zoya does the kindest, most wonderful thing she possibly could. She leans in and whispers those four beautiful, perfect words: “You reek of Keramzin.”

Before she can pull back all the way, I’m laughing, head tipped back. Mirth in my eyes, I say, “What an amazing variety of people there are in the world. A tapestry of tastes and opinions and preferences. I, for example, would much rather smell of a parentless upbringing on an estate than I would naked, childish jealousy. You obviously have another preference. We make such a rainbow,” I make an arc with my hand, a little rainbow appearing and vanishing in its trail, “don’t you think?”

I walk away, and as I pass, I tell her, “Enjoy your stay here, Zoya. However long it lasts.”

A grisha in purple scrambles out of my way with a deferential, “Soverenyi.”

“Thank you, Mathus,” I reply with a nod.

Zoya catches the exchange, her perfect cheeks going blotchy.

I look up and nearly trip over my feet. The Darkling is standing amid a small group of advisers near his massive doors, watching me like the proverbial hawk. There’s something canny on his face that I do not care for at all. Then he’s handed papers by someone next to him who is talking nonstop. He glances at them, but as I move toward him to go to my rooms, his eyes keep rising to me and lingering.

What exactly did I just show him?

Ivan, in his crimson amidst the black of the Darkling and the bland uniforms of the others, stands out like a beacon. Looking at him, I get an idea. An incredibly satisfying idea. So instead of heading toward my rooms, I walk up to the group.

“I apologize for interrupting.” I don’t know if I’m supposed to call the Darkling Soverenyi in front of strangers, so I can only hope my respectful tone correctly straddles whatever line I’m supposed to be on one side or the other of. “May I borrow Ivan?”

“Is it urgent?”

I consider for a moment, then lean in and whisper, “That depends on whether or not you’d prefer I set most of your forest on fire.”

His eyes dart to Zoya and back to mine as I lean back. He returns to his papers and says, “Go with her. Be back by sundown.”

“Soverenyi,” Ivan says deferentially. He looks like he’d love nothing more than to snap me in half. Which is actually perfect.

I move to walk toward the doors that will lead us outside, Ivan following.

The Darkling stops me by taking my hand. I look from it to him in shock, and he laces his fingers through mine to pull me in close. My eyes practically bulge.

“You’ll be taking your dinner with me tonight,” he says, just loud enough that the people around him will hear.

“...Okay,” I reply, half dumb and utterly lost.

He lets go of my hand and returns again to his work with a very curious, “Enjoy your day, Alina.” His Oprichniki open the doors to his chambers as the group nears, and closes them silently after they’ve disappeared through them.

I stare after him longer than I probably should.

“What the hell was that?” I murmur to Ivan, perplexed.

“I have things to do, Starkov,” is all the reply I get. Drenched in annoyance, no less.

I give myself enough of a shake to start walking again. “Shut your grousing nonsense hole, you big red yeti. I’m about to make your week.”

 

* * * * *

 

“I’ve been sparring with the Oprichniki for weeks, you know that,” I had goaded.

“You’re a Corporalki, if anything serious happens, you can stabilize me on the spot,” I had prodded.

When no practical reasons or assurances had worked, insults had, with almost comical ease.

Ivan really needs to work on his temper. Which is hilarious coming from me.

Ivan is also much faster than he looks; the moment we had started, he had jabbed out faster than I could follow with a punch right to my diaphragm, knocking the air out of me and seizing the muscles I needed to get it back. I had looked up at him smiling even as I fought against the panic that comes with not being able to breathe.

This was what I desperately needed right now. No kid gloves. No fear.

Currently, he has me pinned against him, back to front, and rumbles into my ear, arrogant and fed up, “Is this what you were after?”

“It really is. Unless you’re about to try and kiss me. Because it kind of seems like you’re about to try and kiss me.”

He growls and puts me in a choke hold, but since I don’t make it easy on him it’s not as tight as it could be, which gives me maybe eight seconds before I pass out. I am nowhere near ready for this to be over so soon.

I kick my legs up to wrap them around his head. It’s a stupid move and I fall short, but shift the momentum to shove my pelvis away from his and get the distance I need to kick right up into his balls. It barely hits, hampered tremendously by his kefta, but it’s enough to make him grunt and his hold on me to vanish. I roll away from him and push up to my feet.

My request had been simple: _Come at me to kill me. We only stop when one of us can’t keep going anymore. No powers._ He had of course refused, and even when I’d finally goaded him into it, he’d held back.

He looks more or less ready to accommodate me now, and as the humanity threatens to slip away from his face, I let myself go, too. I vanish into instinct and training and anger.

This isn’t about Zoya anymore, she just opened the jar. This is being here. Having to play these fucking mind games. Having to hold so many secrets. Getting ready to kill someone because it needs to be done, and knowing that he’s only going to be the first. It’s the complete uncertainty of my future. It’s knowing that the world is only a year or so away from really trying to sodomize itself. It’s all the work I never should have had to put in to master powers I wouldn’t have asked for. It’s the memory of blue eyes still etched into my brain after so much time and distance.

I am full of hatred and rage. I just didn’t realize how much until right now.

My power crackles around me, desperate to be called, to lash out.

Ivan charges me. We’re near a wall, so I sidestep and yank his arm, using his own force to turn him so he slams into it. Dust falls from the ceiling. He swings around with a right hook so fast it’s like he was expecting what I’d done. I duck my head to the side, deflect a left jab with my forearm, and only avoid falling to the sidesweep of his leg because his size and arrogance make his telegraphs easy to read.

I jump high over his leg, grab his head with both hands, and slam it downward as I kick my knee up. I feel his nose crack on the bone.

It’s like he doesn’t even feel it; his arm swings out to grab me, but outward instead of in toward the middle, hooking around me backwards. I can’t duck out of it before the momentum has my back slamming against the wall and his bulk is pinning me. He stands on my feet, grips my legs hard between his, pins the rest of me in place with his hips and torso, and punches me so hard in the face, two quick snaps, that for a moment I lose myself. I’ve practiced this. I’ve had people hit me over and over in the face, the throat, the stomach, the ribs and knees, the liver and kidneys so I knew what it felt like and how to recover, how to work through the blackness and disorientation, but I can’t change the fact that he has me pinned.

Ivan takes my wrists and holds them outstretched to either side of me, taking strength from my core. I snap my head up, intending to get him under the chin, but he pulls it out of the way. I try to use that instability to get my legs between his and hook them around, tripping both of us up but getting him off me, but the fucker leans in and bites down on my throat, _hard._ If this were really to the death, if it were desperate and absolutely no holds barred and he were someone who could stomach it, he could rip a hole in my windpipe and this would be over.

I shove outward, concentrating all my strength in my hips, trying to get the freedom to bring a knee up, but the fact is that he is immensely stronger than I am. I’ve learned how to get out of every hold everyone I’ve faced could conceive of, but part of what I’ve learned is that sometimes, you just can’t get out. That’s when you exploit another weakness. You get them talking, make an opening.

But I don’t want to do that. Victory isn’t the point, but I know I’ve lost, and this wasn’t near enough, but it’s over all the same and that’s what finishes me off. For the first time since I woke up standing on a dirt road that lead to a titanic wall of shadow, I really, truly snap.

I fight against him like a spitting cat. All he does is move both arms above my head, pin them with one hand, and wrap his other hand around my throat. The paw is so big it forces my chin back.That, and the fact that he can restrain both of my arms with one fucking hand does not help my mood.

Guttural shrieks and feral growls tear out of me and I fight, wild and mindless. The whole time, he keeps me pinned between him and the wall, one hand on my throat and another around my struggling wrists.

Eventually, my energy peters out and finally fails, but he keeps me there, my head tipped back against the wall, both of us panting.

After a long minute with no fight from me, he asks, “Are you done?” Except he doesn’t sound pissed off. He sounds… almost _kind._ For him.

I look down at him and when I see what’s in his eyes, it registers how rough his voice had been. Which is also when I realize there’s a new and very large, very hard thing pressed against my belly. We both know it’s there. We both know that we both know it’s there. But that isn’t what this is about.

You know that place you can get to sometimes where you just… run out of emotions? Where, by whatever means, you get so overloaded they sort of flatline? You could get your biggest buttons pushed, have gravy dumped on your head in a crowded room, you could walk face-first into a spiderweb and you just wouldn’t care. That place where there’s no sense of future or consequence or greater meaning to _anything._

I think that place is why I pull my arms down, put them around his neck, and bury my face there. He doesn’t to stop me. He lets go of my wrists and my throat as soon as I start to move, and after a moment, his arms, big as my thighs, wrap around me. His hands splay and hold. I know it’s hesitant and awkward and I couldn’t care less. I just cling to him, feet dangling in the air.

Eventually he moves us so he can sit down. He’s shifting me to his side, but at the last moment I redirect myself to straddle his lap. I won’t say I don’t enjoy the pressure from the bulge between my legs, but as a courtesy, I keep my hips carefully still. What I really want is just the contact of my front against his.

I don’t cry. I think that’s something I don’t do in general. But when I finally pull away, looking down, my lashes are damp. My hands slip down him to rest against his stomach, and my fingers curl loosely into the fabric there. Underneath, it’s hard and uneven from muscle. I don’t think the man has an ounce of body fat on him.

Things to say pass through my mind, but I don’t speak them.

_How did you know?_

_...Thank you._

I just sit there breathing shallowly. His hands are on my hips. He hasn’t grown any softer between my legs, and the shift of my hips as I sat up likely didn’t help. His grip is says he’s trying not to clamp down as hard as he wants to.

My skin feels strange. Too real, too full and alive. I’ve never been so aware of my lips, but it’s not because I want to kiss him.

My eyes slide up to his. It starts so innocently, but when arousal is in the game, you can’t ignore it. _People_ can’t ignore it. It’s just a look. A connection. Then it’s a look that’s not asking, but isn’t a “no,” either. Something hungry opens between us, and the shift toward the edge of the needle is palpable as it starts to tip beyond the point of no return. But he breaks the contact at the last possible second. He looks away.

“You aren’t mine, Starkov,” he rumbles, his voice so harsh it sends an ache between my legs.

“I don’t _belong_ to anyone,” I retort, ire at the very idea is in my voice. “And I don’t plan to.”

But he’s already standing up, and not in a way that’s meant to help me with a graceful dismount. I spin off him and sit, my shoulder blades against the wall and my head tipped back. I close my eyes; there’s a little pinch between my brows.

“Thanks for the practice,” I say. I realize I’m breathing fast again. “Sorry about the… you know.” The injuries I gave him are too numerous to list. He needs to get out of here, I know he does. For both of us.

Eyes still closed, I watch him watch me, then turn and leave. He pauses at the doorway, starts to leave again, stops again. “...You’re doing better than you think.” It costs him something to say that.

I open my eyes and look over at him. The ghost of a cocky smile pulls up one side of my mouth.

“Who said I thought I wasn’t doing well?”

He doesn’t smile. He scowls. Then he leaves for real.

I stay there a lot longer than I should, soaking in the hurt of deep bruises, swelling flesh, and minor internal bleeding. He didn’t give me any bone injuries, and it makes me feel shorted. I want to be in more pain than this.

 

* * * * *

 

The Darkling glances up when Ivan lets himself in and closes the door quietly. He only just missed Genya and the last of the field reports. “Well?”

“She wanted to spar. Well, she wanted someone she could beat to death who’d return the favor. She cracked one of my ribs and split my lip, and that was just in the first few minutes. Thing is stronger than she looks.” His hand goes unconsciously to the rib that was just healed. “Her extra training is paying off.”

The Darkling sets down his quill to look at the man properly. His Second looks drawn. Emotionally.

“Either she finally broke,” he goes on, “or she’s close to it. I don’t know what exactly got under her skin, but whatever it was did a hell of a job.”

“Nazyalenski.”

Ivan understands immediately. She has that affect on everyone. Even, apparently, Alina. He’d started to think the little thing was impervious.

Frustratingly, just the thought of her right now has his blood rushing in the wrong direction. It’s easy enough to correct, at least.

“Apparently she took a diversion with the tracker in Kribursk,” the Darkling says, “and felt Alina should know about it.”

Ivan feels a stab of something hot and unfamiliar. It leaves him annoyed.

Unlike his Second, the Darkling reads and understands it perfectly. He’s quiet for a moment, taking it in.

“...How long have you had feelings for her?” He asks.

Ivan pulls a sour face. “Zoya? She’s powerful, but I would touch that from fifty feet.” Not the least because Ivan doesn’t touch the Darkling’s favorites. He would never risk creating any kind of trouble for him.

“No,” the Darkling says quietly, musing. “The Sun Summoner.”

Ivan’s eyes snap up to find the Darkling’s eyes fixed on him.

“I don’t,” he protests immediately. Honestly. At least as far as he knows.

“Have you two become close?” His tone is professional and his meaning is clear.

“No,” he denies just as readily. “After the match, I think she wanted to.... But that was just....” He trails off and the Darkling nods, understanding.

After an uncomfortable moment, Ivan admits, “There is something about her. I know that. The way she sees people, the way she’s four feet taller than she looks. But I would never--”

The Darkling goes back to his papers and interrupts, “I trust if the situation changes, you will understand how vital it is that you act with discretion.”

Ivan remembers the way the Darkling had pulled Alina to him not two hours ago. He remembers the times he has stared after her, watched her. A deep look of confusion sets on his face.

“Soverenyi, I thought....”

The Darkling looks back up at him, inscrutable.

After a moment, he asks Ivan, “Was there anything else?”

“...Yes.” He clears his throat lightly. “The blowup in the stables. It wasn’t over that man. Part of it might have been, but I think that was only what lit the fuse.”

“Yes, you mentioned. Thank you Ivan, that will be all.”

The Corporalnik hesitates only a moment before bowing and letting himself out.

The instant the door is closed, the Darkling lets himself stop. He sets the quill down and slowly leans back in his chair, gripping the edges of the table too hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't yet, please have a gander at the relationship tags, rating, etc.
> 
> \- - -
> 
> “Shut your nonsense hole, you bit blue yeti” comes from Amazon’s[ The Tick](https://www.amazon.com/The-Tick/dp/B01J776HVW) show. Which by the way is pretty great.
> 
> The thing about something new in the air not agreeing with Zoya is from The Tailor (I couldn’t find it for sale on Amazon). Genya has this great line after it, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t read it.
> 
> The walking into a spiderweb thing is a reference to [this](https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html) Hyperbole And A Half comic. Which is about as amazing and hilarious and en pointe as every other Hyperbole And A Half comic.


	17. Literally The Worst

I open the door to my chambers and Genya darts out, dragging me inside and then nearly knocking the breath out of me with a hug. “You glorious woman, I don’t think I can remember the last time I’ve laughed so hard! Saints, you should have seen her face as you walked away, I thought it was going to pucker its way inside out.” She kisses me on the cheek repeatedly until I manage to pry her off.

“Yeah, I love you too and whatever, but I have somewhere to be.”

“Yes! I heard! And _saw,”_ she effuses. She’s in full-tilt gossip mode, God help me. “What was that about?” Her eyes widen and she lets out a little gasp. “Did he kiss you again?”

“God no,” I scowl. “I don’t actually have any idea what it was about. Well that’s not true, I have one idea, but it’s stupid and doesn’t make any sense.”

“I doubt that.”

I make a disgusted sound. “If you’re going to harass me, then help while you do it.” I gesture vaguely to my hair. “Nothing fancy, just less, you know, ‘I haven’t touched this since I washed last.’” I sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed with my back facing her. “All I could think of was that he was trying to take my side against Zoya. Like a show of support. But like I said, that’s stupid.”

“Is it?”

I scoff. “Of course it is. I’m a big girl, who gives a shit if we had one hardly-tiff, and honestly, with all the things he does and worries about and who he is, one of which is older than dirt, do you really think he’d bother? The _Darkling?_ And I mean, do I strike you as the wilting flower sort? There’s zero reason he would step in, it’s not like.... It’s not... like....”

I frown.

Genya leans around and peaks at my face. I catch a little smile that’s entirely too amused before she leans back.

He wouldn’t _sleep_ with his Grisha, right?

Ugh, of course he would.

I might vomit.

“Moving along,” I say, thoroughly disgusted. “...I don’t actually remember what we were talking about. Uh… oh, right. Yes. Right. Anyway if he _had,_ you know, a, ugh, _history_ there, for God’s sake stepping in like that would only make whatever has crawled up her backside worse. I don’t especially care, she’s not someone who can get to a person like me, but I can already tell the covert glaring and overly loud, perfectly timed ‘whispering’ is going to get old.”

“Which should be fine, since you’re always staring at a book anyway.”

“Honey, do you really think I’m not paying attention to everything that’s happening around me?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Speaking of which, how did you know she was coming over to us?” The joviality is all but gone from her voice.

I explain my breakthrough with the light, how I can more or less see everything around me at any given moment.

Her hands still, then drop. “Alina… that’s incredible.” She means it. “Does the Darkling know?”

I shrug. “If Baghra told him, sure. I don’t really give him progress reports.”

She’s quiet, and I let her be. Eventually she goes back to work on my hair.

“Is this what you’re wearing?” She asks. My summer kefta.

“Of course. I’m not changing just because he’s acting weird or we’re eating together. This isn’t a diplomatic summit.”

She smiles to herself. I’m polite enough not to ask why, what with the fact that I shouldn’t have been able to see it.

She hums, a musing sound. “You should do something else. Do you have any jewels?”

I snort. Technically I do now - Vasily had given me some horrible gem-encrusted bracelet, but it was thrown in the back of a drawer waiting for the day I could sell it or give it away - but if I’m not going to change my clothes, I’m certainly not going to put on _jewels._

Genya has a thoughtful look on her face as she finishes up.

“What,” I say, “no speeches about how I should beware of powerful men?”

For just a moment, her hands freeze. In a voice much lighter than her face, she says, “I think you’re just about the last person in the world who needs to hear that. If anything, they should beware of you.”

“I knew I liked you,” I say with total sincerity. I turn around and let my legs dangle from the edge of the bed. My feet don’t touch the floor. “Anyway I’m not dressing up for him. I don’t want him to think this is a _thing,_ because it absolutely is not a thing, and if he tries to touch me, I swear to God I’m--”

I freeze. I freeze because a wonderfully, magnificently bad idea has just occurred to me.

He doesn’t know me well enough to know when I’m trying to bait him yet, right?

“Alina?”

“Do you know… I think you’re right. Do you have any jewels I can wear? Something quiet. So, you know, _smaller_ than your entire finger.”

At the worst, he’ll think I’ve dressed up for him. Which I actually would hate. But at the best, he’ll see the King on me.

...Come to think of it, that’s disgusting.

Still worth it. He sprung this on me, the least I can do is spring something on him to even the field.

 

* * * * *

 

We’re interrupted by a servant telling me I’m requested in the kitchens. For a second I’m confused, and then my face lights up. I look at Genya.

“Go on,” she says. “I’ll fetch something and meet you there.”

“Ok, but hurry. Take a horse? No, send a runner. That’s a thing, right? Just hurry.” Because I know what this is, and it won’t hold.

 

* * * * *

 

A disgusted expression claws its way over my face almost the moment it touches my tongue, and their faces turn from bliss at their own tastes to falling to the floor and straight through to the larders.

I shake my head quickly. “No, no it’s perfect, I can tell. I just can’t stand sweets,” I say through an apologetic smile. I force myself to swallow. I give Anika a quick kiss on the cheek and Vadim a rushed hug, and yell that I owe them as I hurry out the door and straight to the Darkling’s chambers.

Genya catches me in the hall, panting, her hand out, two reasonably-sized red gems sitting in her palm, attached to delicate silver wires.

“They’ll make your eyes stand out,” she huffs.

My face contorts and my voice goes disgustingly high. “You ran for me? Genya....” I push forward and give her a quick one-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek - did someone drug my tea? - before hurrying off again.

“Open open open open,” I’m ordering loudly before I’ve reached the black double doors. I’m moving as fast as I can while keeping my gait smooth.

Down the inner hall, past Ivan, who gives me a peculiar look that I shouldn’t see because I’m staring down at the small, deep dish of chocolate, and through the door to the Darkling’s receiving room without so much as knocking.

He’s sitting at the head of his table, nearest the fireplace, and starts to say my name, but only gets the first letter out before I gently set the dish in front of him, along with a clean spoon, and order, “Try this.” My cheeks are flushed, my eyes are damn near glowing with excitement.

He doesn’t move.

“Hurry up, it’s only good when it’s straight out of the oven!” I bounce up and down on my feet a little. “I just came from your kitchens, it’s safe.” My bottom lip is between my teeth.

...This is not the way I pictured our night’s standoff beginning.

With a bewildered expression, he picks up the spoon, scoops up a small bite of the almost creamy… cake? I don’t know how a souffle is technically classified. And tries it.

He stills before the spoon finishes leaving his lips.

I’m breathing fast, but silently, my eyes rapt on his face. I’m smiling like an idiot.

His eyes close. It’s brief, but by God it’s there.

I laugh in victory. “I _knew_ you’d like it! Two of the cooks have been working on it for weeks. They called me down just now because they thought they’d finally gotten it, and they did. _I’m_ sure as shit not going to eat the thing, and I figured you could use a pick-me-up.” Because he’s the Darkling. Likely he pretty much always needs a pick-me-up.

I remember Genya’s earrings and thread them through my ears. He watches me, and when the first one is in, his eyes linger on it. I’m sure he knows _I_ don’t own anything like this, which makes the leap to Genya and thence, to the King (ew) easy. He might assume they were the gift from Vasily, but that would probably just stick in his craw even worse.

The game is on. It makes me a little sad. But at least we had that brief moment of weightlessness. No fences, no games. At least not for me.

I pull out the chair just to his right and sit, angling it toward him. I rest an elbow comfortably on the table and lean into it, crossing my legs to settle in. I look from him down to the souffle and back, a little of the excitement back in my eyes. “Well?” I laugh. “It really is only good when it’s very fresh.”

He glances at it, then offers me the spoon. I pull a face and shake my head. “I hate sweets. Even just the smell sometimes is too much.”

He takes another delicate bite, and though I can tell he’s savoring it, he’s also watching me.

It’s funny how much I’m starting to see on his face when it should be completely inscrutable.

“I gave it to Genya,” I say with a soft smile. It’s actually… tender. And I’m not sure if it’s because of her or because of him. “The honey cake,” I clarify. “It was very sweet - er, figuratively speaking. I didn’t want to waste it, so I called her up.”

A little furrow forms between his brows and I’m left wondering yet again how much of it is an act. How much of _him_ is an act. The unfortunate part is that, because I know what I do of him, every expression he makes is so touching that part of me doesn’t even want to know, because I’m afraid of the answer. I savor them like secret treasures.

“And what is this?” He asks of the souffle.

“No idea,” I say with a breathless smile. “I was force-fed a bite years ago and did everything I could to block the entire experience from my memory. But when I got here, I had someone I wanted to do something nice for, so it seemed like an ok place to start. Who doesn’t love chocolate?”

“Besides you?”

“I assume very, very dark chocolate might be ok, but yes, besides me.” I wave him off, “But everyone knows I’m abnormal.” I give him a smile, then look away, studying the room to give him some privacy. And, frankly, myself. This was poorly planned. I know my coming in here like this, before I was supposed to, in an unexpected mood and bearing a surprise isn’t exactly a poor move to have made, but it leaves me feeling lighter than I should around him. Less on my guard. Because the truth is I don’t _want_ to be on my guard around him.

That’s ok. Mostly. Acting on that want, letting it shape my judgement, is not.

...Jesus I’m too much like him. The world might actually be screwed.

“Dinner won’t be ready for at least another fifteen minutes,” he tells me.

“That’s fine.” I turn a wicked grin on him. “I can use the time to nose through your stuff.”

I slowly lap the room, stopping first at a bookcase. I run over the spines of his collection one by one. Most of them aren’t in Ravkan, but a few I can at least recognize the origins of - Fjerdan and Shu are distinctive languages. Part of me hopes to come across slender, unmarked leather-bound journals, but of course he’s not going to keep his Grandfather’s Sacred Research (™) out where anyone can see. It’s probably hidden in the ceiling with his pornography collection. Which of course he doesn’t have, because _if_ a septuacentarian isn’t generally just tired of sex (I imagine it comes and goes), he sure as shit isn’t going to be someone who has a hard time finding partners.

Which is a thought that has me feeling an exceptionally troubling twist of anger.

I run my fingers over papers on a desk. I can just make out the shadows of ink on the other side. I finger a black-feathered quill that shines in subtle rainbow colors at the right angle, and the back of the chair, and the subtle accenting near the edges of the desk. Despite what I said about being nosy - and my intention to be just that - I don’t open the drawers, though. I look at the objects on the mantle, the maps and paintings on the wall. I wonder how many have personal meaning, or if everything was just picked out to fit a mood. And if it was, is it the same in his bedroom? His bathroom? Does he have a private study or lounge, somewhere no one but him is allowed?

I feel the fabric of armchairs and wall“paper” and examine the patterns and weaves. I touch the silver of the carved doorknob that I’ve never been able to just stop and look at, the way it joins to the door, and the hinges opposite. The marbling of the dark, shining floor. It’s a solid piece of stone, not tiles. Fabrikator work, I assume. The vaulted, curved ceiling has lines that run up from each corner, and even it is intricately carved and meticulously designed. All things I’ve never _seen_ in here.

He’s watching me the entire time. Mostly. He looks me up and down more than once, but that’s in the vast minority; he’s watching _me,_ not, you know, leering. There was also the second time he let his eyes close around a bite of souffle, which he’s long since finished.

I get five points for this.

There’s a soft knock on the door and when he says “Enter,” four servants let themselves in. Two carry shining silver trays topped with matching cloches, one delicate goblets and a clear decanter of burgundy wine, and the fourth a tray of cheeses and fruits.

The Darkling indicates where to put my plate, and everything else is quickly and gracefully laid out. Two glasses of wine are poured, place settings arranged, the covers lifted from our plates, and the servants retreat to the door. I stand at the side of the room, watching all of this, any lightness that had been on my face seeping away.

“I’d like water, please,” I say clearly as they’re on their way out, my eyes on the spread of food. The last servant gives a little bow before closing the door behind himself.

I just stand there, my hands clasped behind my back.

The Darkling watches me. He watches my face. There’s something unnervingly comfortable about the silence. About the way he lets me be instead of prodding. Or this is his way of prodding. Or he’s taking advantage of an opportunity to study me.

It’s exhausting being around him.

It’s just.... I know we’re the Darkling and the Sun Summoner. I know we live in a literal palace. It’s just too _much._ It’s too much, because I remember the tray of slop I was fed in the mess tent outside Kribursk. Because I remember the way even the people in the lower city here in Os Alta were too thin. Even the children. Because I remember how wiry our soldiers were.

But on this table we have fruit in winter, an array of cheeses, a wine worth God knows how much, all sitting on polished silver and in gilt crystal, served by people in robes made of finer material than some people will ever even _see_ in the whole of their lives. The sadder part? To anyone of any sort of rank, even someone well below me, this dinner is so “simple” that it would literally be an insult.

I hate the world sometimes.

I duck my eyes neatly and take my seat at the table.

On a plate of delicate porcelain accented in gold sits what appears to be a generous piece of flaky pastry-coated smoked fish - one of the only ways of preparing fish I can stomach, thankfully - and a salad of mixed vegetables dressed in a simple gravy. The servant comes back with two more glasses and a decanter identical to the one that holds the wine, but full of water. He sets them down and leaves.

The Darkling is still watching me.

“I assumed you would prefer a simple meal,” he says. “Was I wrong?”

 _Was I wrong?_ Arrogant, presuming....

_Good._

“On the contrary,” I say quietly, musing, as if to myself. I pick up a gold fork and tuck in, gingerly.

After my first couple of bites, I down my glass of wine in one go.

He hasn’t started eating yet. Ass.

As if absently, I reach a hand behind my head and gather my hair, giving a little scratch to my neck as I pull it all over the opposite shoulder. It perfectly bares the earring closest to him and sets it swinging gently. I take another bite as if I’ve done nothing at all.

He finally starts to eat.

“You’ve been spending a good deal of time at the Grand Palace,” he says.

My fork stops halfway up, my mouth open.

Touche, DL.

Nothing will make your heart beat faster than thinking you might have been caught.

I look at him, frozen, then set the fork down on my plate.

“It’s deeply unsettling that you know that.”

“You were the one who pointed out that everyone’s hearts beat differently.”

“Yeees, but no Grisha could make that out, not even with an amplifier.” What is he digging for?

I think the look on his face means he wants to ask me how I know that. Instead, he just carries on. “Why are you going?”

He’ll know how much time I’ve been spending in the library there, so that’s not what he’s asking.

As usual, select pieces of the truth are my lie of choice.

“...Vasily is going to propose to me.” I do nothing to hide my utter lack of amusement.

“Shall I offer my congratulations?”

I choke. What the actual....

Oh. _Oh._ Is he.... He’s _worried._ It’s easy to speak ill of someone, but when you know they’re going to hand you a throne....

“You can offer me a bucket to vomit into. Is what you can offer me. And a book of acceptable size to throw at your head should I get the impression you actually think I’d consider it. Vasily Lantsov is as repulsive as his father, and unless I miss my guess, he’ll be twice as deadly for Ravka.”

“Something you could influence as Queen.”

I think I must be looking at him as if his head has just turned into an octopus.

“...I don’t know whether I should feel my intelligence is being insulted, my morals or loyalty tested, pat you on the shoulder and tell you you have nothing to worry about, or if I should ask what drug you’re on right now.”

I’m looking at him, because it’s his turn to talk now. That’s how this works. And he’s looking at me. But no one is saying anything, and my brows are pinching closer and closer together.

He takes a strange kind of breath, high up in his chest. It makes me think of a very particular sort of self control. But no. No, he can’t be that far along already.

“Why have you been avoiding looking at me?” I ask bluntly, but calmly.

If he was anyone else, I’d start to wonder if he just wasn’t going to answer. But he’s not anyone else, so I wait.

“I’ve been finding you distracting. I don’t care for it.”

...Well that took a left turn. I’m not even done with my fish yet. I wanted to know the answer, yes, but I had expected him to play coy or change the subject.

I consider several replies, and find I like the idea of just playing along. It’s more honest, anyway. “...Yeah. I actually know what you mean. Human relationships are obnoxious. Speaking of,” because oh my God, “why did you say yes to the meeting with the Ambassador?”

“I didn’t.” He takes a bite of vegetables. It’s weird watching him eat. Sort of shatters the illusion a little.

“That’s funny, I remember hearing something different. From your mouth. When you were standing in front of me saying it.”

He looks _annoyed._ You know, for him. “The King insisted.”

The King? Why would he…? Vasily. That has to be it. But why would _Vasily_ insist? Does he want to see how I’ll perform? That would mean he had known about the invitation, and possibly that he had already planned on inserting himself. Is he actually more clever than I’ve been giving him credit for?

I snort. Of course he’s not, that’s ridiculous.

The Darkling quirks a brow at me and pauses to take a sip of wine. The deep red in contrast with his pale skin and dark hair is beautiful.

“I was just thinking about why he would do that,” I explain. “Which lead me to think Vasily had something to do with it, but then I remembered Vasily is an idiot. I was laughing at myself.”

“He is an idiot with teeth, Alina. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that not everyone will appreciate your candor.”

“And yet you just did.”

His smile is entirely insincere.

I push my plate far enough forward to lean in. “What I can’t figure out is why _you_ need to be there.”

“Is it so difficult to understand?”

“It wouldn’t be, but you’re inscrutable.”

“How disappointing.”

I give him a flinty look. “Fine. The obvious answer is that you’re worried for my safety, but by dint of the fact that that’s the obvious answer alone, I know it’s likely the wrong one.” Because it’s the Darkling. He’s layers. It’s what he _does._ “But there’s also the fact that Heartrenders or even Oprichniki could keep me safe from two other men at a small luncheon just fine. I wondered if you wanted to piss him off, which is still a possibility depending on what irons you have in the fire.” I narrow my eyes at him, thinking. “But no,” I say, musing, “it’s not that either, though I’m sure you’ll use it that way later if you need to. I think it’s...hmmmm....”

Ah. There it is.

“Association,” I say, quiet and languid and sure. “You want to claim me.”

The lack of expression on his face tells me I’m on the nose and I’ll be honest, inside I puff up like a fucking peacock.

“...I wonder why people think you’re so hard to read.” I pause, but he says nothing. “But that’s not true, people just don’t like anomalies or outliers. They let themselves get thrown because you’re not the norm. The ones who would normally look deeper let themselves get thrown by the fact that you’re, you know, you, and the ones who might see anyway, well they’re probably the easiest to play, right? Because _you_ see through everyone, and making yourself seem ‘other’ is a second skin.”

Quietly, he says, “Who’s to say I’m not playing you?”

Is that a warning, or is it a test?

I answer easily, “I assume you are. Almost always.”

"How disappointing," he says again, but this time, his tone is anything but unreadable.

We have some sort of stalemate then, just staring at one another, dinner abandoned.

I stand abruptly and walk to the door, then lean out to speak to the Oprichnik, and instead pull a surprised expression.

“Aran?” I blink. He’s one of the few who has done me the kindness of beating me senseless in the stables at night more than a few times.

His face comes to life and he gives a little smile and a dip of his chin.

“How's Mirna?” I ask. “Has she had the baby?”

His face practically splits with obvious joy. “A girl. I got the letter yesterday.”

“That’s wonderful!” I effuse. “Are they both healthy?” Childbirth here is no joke.

“Aye.”

I glance over my shoulder, though my face is hidden behind the door, and whisper, “Do you want me to get you some time off to go see them?”

His eyes widen, “I couldn’t…”

“But I could, and if memory serves, I’ve been craving some random thing or another that can only be found in that area, anyway. Now shove off, I’ll make sure it’s paid leave. And you can take her a nice box of those zemeni spiced chocolates she likes. She’ll need the energy.”

A warm smile touches his eyes, and I meet it with a playful wink.

“Would you go find something white? I don’t care what, just nothing too small. Oh! No, you know what? Just go grab a platter or something and pile it with snow.”

He gives me a funny sort of lopsided smile.

I quiet my voice, “Oh, and I forgot something in my room, it’s a bundle of gold fabric tied with a black ribbon, top right drawer of my desk. You can send a servant after it if you want.”

He dips his chin and heads off with a murmured “Soverenyi.”

It’s coming from his guards now. That worries me. But there’s no way he doesn’t know, _especially_ if it’s happening in his guard, and if he knows, he could have told them to knock it off. ...But if he does and he hasn’t, that’s only a different kind of concerning. Then again, would that even be something they just picked up on their own?

The Darkling is giving me the absolute strangest studying look I think I’ve ever seen as I calmly walk back to the table and reclaim my seat. I pour myself another glass of wine, because frankly the first one has me feeling kind of amazing, and push my plate away. In answer to the way his eyes follow it, I tell him without looking up, “My appetite makes sense again. It started slowing down a few weeks ago. Whoever has been adjusting my clothes every week may no longer be plotting my murder.” I don’t down this glass of wine as I did the last, but I hardly sip it, either.

I’m looking down at the embroidery on the sleeve of my kefta as if I’ve never really studied it before, as I watch a look come over his face that I can only interpret as, “What the hell even are you?”

“Does that bother you?” I ask, finally glancing up at him. His face is schooled, and he’s finishing the last of what’s on his plate.

“What?”

“That whole… Soverenyi thing. With me. I know you heard it.”

“Should it?”

“...You’re really obnoxious, do you know that?”

His lips twitch, and I absolutely believe it’s not calculated.

I look down. “I don’t know, I mean, the kefta I understood. Even the chair, at least a little. But this just seems....” I trail off.

“You’ve gone through a lot of change in a very short time, Alina.”

I laugh quietly.

Then there’s a knock at the door and Aran lets himself in. He hands me the soft bundle, and after a gesture from me, sets what looks like one of the tea trays from the tables near the fire, heaped with snow, on the middle of the table, safe over a runner of black and silver. “Thanks,” I mouth subtly at him. My lips are tilted down in a suppressed smile.

When the door closes behind him, I gently slide the bundle along the table until it sits in front of the Darkling. It’s about the size of two thick books sitting on their covers, and wrapped in nothing but shifting gold fabric that’s tied with a thick, black velvet ribbon. It took a servant fifteen minutes to teach me how to tie it properly. Fiddly little things.

“A birthday gift,” I say quietly. “I asked Baghra. She said she doesn’t know when your birthday is exactly, but she thought it was some time near the end of the year.”

He’s staring down at it, unmoving. As I watch him, I realize: he really _is_ getting easier to read. He’s like a quail. Not in any way having to do with fear, obviously, but in that the more he feels, the more still he goes. He goes still to hide. He goes still to think, too, but that looks a little different. As does his stillness when he’s trying to intimidate, or when he’s observing.... I haven’t spent much time around him, but apparently it’s been enough, because his silences are all starting to feel different. And it’s not an act. Sometimes, yes, but no one, not even him, has the energy to fabricate and maintain an entire personality like this. Not in front of the one person who they secretly want to really, truly see them in an eternal world where no one else does or will or can.

I go on. “I had no idea what you might like, and that’s aside from the fact that if you ever wanted something, you’d just get it for yourself. So… I thought an idea might be better,” I say quietly. I almost laugh when I realize I’m nervous.

He looks up at me. I smile, just a little, and gesture for him to open it.

After an unhurried look at me that I would nearly say looks thrown, he gives the velvet ribbon a little tug. It slips open easily, and the thin, liquid golden fabric is slid away to reveal a bundle of black and silver. It’s the front collar of a neatly-folded kefta.

I give him a moment to look at it. Then I tell him, my voice soft as if I’ll break some kind of spell if I speak too loudly, “I’m not going to pretend I understand your motivations, but since I got here… well I get the feeling that everything you’ve been doing to elevate me isn’t just about politics. I told you I don’t want to dress in black because I’m not you. For the same reason, I didn’t see you wanting to take up black and gold. To step under someone else’s umbrella, so to speak.

“I thought....” I hesitate before going on. His fingers are running over the embroidery. “The fete is coming up. I thought I’d wear your color to that. No gold, just black.” He looks up at me without raising his head, and his eyes are like piercing chips of ice, searing with cold. “I actually thought white would be a little more appropriate, at least poetically, but… well.” Boy likes to get his way. It irks me to bend to him even this much, but it will be a nothing in the long run. “I figured black would tell everyone what they need to know,” I say in a near whisper. “After that, quietly, I thought....” I pull in against the feeling of… what is this? Vulnerability? God, it’s horrifying. I pull a little face, but make myself finish. “It doesn’t have to be this, but I thought maybe we could be something new. Not you and I, but… us.”

Sweet Jesus, I realize how that sounds, but if I try and backpedal now it will only make this worse. What I _wanted_ to say was more like “not the Darkling and the Sun Summoner, but a unit.” There’s also the fact that it probably sounds like I’m making a grab for power.

As if I consider everything I’ve just said completely normal and not at all horrifyingly awkward, I point to the snow and say, “And this.” I clear my throat. “I was wondering if you thought people might be open to a dress code for the Fete, because if everyone is dressed in white, or at least the right colors, I thought they might enjoy....” I shift the light so that the room goes dim, but the snow glows as if neon. “It wouldn’t be a major theme for the evening, I have better things to do than keep them glowing all night. Like stare dumbly at a blank wall, for instance. But I thought it could be a fun touch. Something new. They have such short attention spans, they’re always hungry for new. As if there’s really any such thing.”

He’s quiet. Just… silent. For too long. I restore the light to its normal tone and brightness.

My first instinct is to fill the lapse with chatter, because I’m a person and that’s how we work. But I refuse to play that game with him.

He looks at my hands where they rest atop the table. Fidgeting, just a little.

His eyes slide up to mine. “I’d like to ask you a personal question.”

My brows shoot up. “Okay....”

“Who hurt you?”

I laugh and it’s almost sputtering. “Excuse me?” But his face shows no sign of jest or lightness.

“You don’t like to be touched.”

All the mirth slips from my face. “...Oh. Uh, no. I mean I can see why you’d think that, and I suppose to an extent you’re right, but it’s not that I don’t like to be touched, exactly. I just hate....” I stop to find the right word. “Presumption, I guess? That’s not exactly it, either, though.” I think, a thumbnail eventually finding its way between my teeth as I do. He seems fine waiting. Which he ought to be, because he was right and that was a seriously personal question.

I find the answer and I go still, because I don’t like it.

My eyes cast away so I can chase the tails of the insight. I tell him, “It’s easier to see people when you stand back. I don’t have to tell you that. When they touch you, it’s always because they want something. Sergei that first day, or Retvenko. They wanted to buy me with it. To kiss up, win the loyalty of a lonely girl. It was calculated. And touch… it’s too important to lie about. Maybe I think it’s the one thing that should always be honest, I don’t know. You can’t stop people from lying with their words, sometimes with their eyes or faces or bodies. But you don’t have to let them touch you. Not if they don’t mean it.”

“And if they do?”

Now I just _refuse_ to look at him. I lean back in my chair. “That’s just worse, isn’t it?” My voice sounds almost dead.

“...Is that why you told me not to kiss you again?”

I give him a long look. “...You are just literally the worst, did you know that?” I shake my head with a quiet disgusted sound and change the subject. “I want to show you something. But I’ll need to change, and you’ll need to find a couple warm blankets that can get wet and maybe dirty. Can I meet you back here in ten minutes?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Emotional quail"
> 
> My friend sent it to me, I still can't frikkin' breathe


	18. The Path Is Never Clean

I think I understand the long hallway now, because (not-so-) little Aleks opens a passage from it to the outside, just as well-hidden as the one that leads to the guest wing. If I get some time alone in here, I’ll have to probe for hidden doors and see how much nuance I can pick up over the light. I’d be excited for the new exercise if my heart weren’t thudding its way out through my skin.

He’s carrying two thick blankets under one arm, a strange and disconcertingly homey sight, far too nice in my opinion. I’ve changed into my warmest winter kefta. I’ve never felt so much like we matched, our pale necks tickled by dense, soft black fur, our shoulders wrapped in thick midnight.

The moment we get outside, I surround us in a pocket of warmth and stop him. “I need to borrow this for a second,” I say, reaching out and hooking my index finger around his. The swell of his power is infinitely more tolerable than it used to be, but still almost disorienting. I never was certain exactly how it worked when we touched. Do his feelings have to be especially strong for me to feel them? Can he feel mine?

I close my eyes and scatter from my body, flying over the grounds on the moonlight, over white fields and dry paths, winding through the trunks of trees. But for a few older Grisha in the Banya far from where we are, everything is deserted, presumably for the entirely more sane warmth of the fires inside the Little Palace.

I smile to myself and open my eyes, glancing conspiratorially at him. Except I find him staring down at our hands, a furrow between his brows like he’s watching a cat lovingly grooming a small bird.

He quickly but subtly pulls his hand away and gestures for me to lead on. “It’s been a while since anyone truly piqued my curiosity.” The words billow from his lips in a cloud of white. He has a strange, private look to him when he says it. “What did you do?” At my obvious lack of comprehension, he clarifies, “Just now.”

“Oh. I wanted to make sure no one was going to see us sneaking around in the dark together. Rumors and all.”

He obviously doesn’t make the connection that that means I was “looking” around. Shouldn’t it be painfully obvious that I can now see for dozens and scores of yards in every direction? Snork.

“I’ve learned all kinds of tricks in the last few months,” I tell him, and only just stop myself from winking. Which I hate. He’s the only person I edit myself so much around, and it isn’t just because I have to be careful. It’s because with him, I don’t know what the right answers are, or the right words, or the right actions. More to the point, I seem to care if I get something wrong.

I explain my remote viewing, as it were, as I lead on through undisturbed snow that quickly thins and almost clears under the cover of branches, some bare, some fanned with needles. We pass the signs of what looks like some sort of predator diving into the snow after a mouse or vole. In the distance, an owl launches soundlessly from a branch.

When I’m done, he looks at me in a way I can’t parse.

“You know it’s really fuc-- it’s really _unsettling_ when you do that,” I say, more irritated than I mean to sound.

“When I listen?”

I give him an unamused look and reply flatly, “When you look at me like that. I can’t tell if I’m about to get praised or patronized or pinned to a wall. Like a bug,” I hurry to add at the way his brows inch upward. “Saints alive,” I curse under my breath.

“Actually,” he muses, “I was thinking how impressive you are.”

I snort.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“One, yes it is, at least from you.” I ignore the way his brows twitch upward again. “I think it’s more likely you’re trying to flatter me for some inscrutable and probably entirely obnoxious reason. And two… I don’t know,” I say, mulishly uncomfortable. “I don’t think of it that way, I guess. I just work hard.”

“Yes, you do,” he says with a near-silent huff in his voice. “It’s impossible to miss. You took to the ground running from the moment you left my tent in Kribursk. I used to question whether you really didn’t know you were Grisha before that day.”

“And what conclusion did you draw?” I ask, somewhere between curious and arch.

“The correct one.”

I roll my eyes.

“It’s much more than that,” he says. He sounds musing, or maybe thoughtful. “I’ve never seen anyone take so quickly to their powers, particularly not as an adult. Especially not when they weren’t even aware they had them. You’re an anomaly in much more than the obvious way.

“The way your mind works is interesting. You look for the holes around you and then find ways to fill them. If half my Grisha were as motivated and creative as you are, I’d like our odds better out there. But it’s more than that, too. It’s raw talent, and you seek to take it in hand without being told. You were born to be who you’re becoming here.”

I keep my hard, unamused, and maybe even pained look to myself.

“What else can you do?” He asks curiously.

I shrug. “Tricks. You saw an illusion, that’s one of the more impressive things. But--”

“What about the unimpressive things?”

I look at him sideways. “Uh… I can see what a person has in their pockets or make a mirror out of thin air? Make something seem bigger or smaller, look around a corner.... I don’t know. Honestly the list is getting pretty long, and some things I’ve just done to know if I could do them, then never touched them again. Right now I’m pretty sure the criminal world would wet themselves to get ahold of me. And not even mostly for ransom.

I can’t help the way I start to get more animated. “You can’t see most light, and I play a lot with that. It does some pretty cool stuff. Night vision, that purple light I made earlier is good for spotting blood and saliva and… other things, even after they’ve been cleaned up. I can look through a wall or a person’s flesh. I can bake a potato in under five minutes. Not meat, though. Always comes out tough and dry. I can make heat without light, light without heat, set things on fire....” Read lips, turn invisible....

I shrug again. None of that is particularly useful toward what I’m “supposed” to do, but then, I know that isn’t what he wants me to do. And he plans on cheating, anyway.

“I think it’s safe to say everyone around you has noticed how hard you work,” He says quietly. “I also think you have a problem accepting compliments.”

I make a derisive noise.

“You’ve made it clear you don’t care what they think, Alina, and I won’t say that’s a bad instinct to have. But you need to be aware of it.”

“Oh,” I say with a dark little laugh, “I’m aware of it.”

“Meaning?”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. If you need to know, ask me when we’re on the clock. Right now, I’m not your Sun Summoner, and you’re not my boss. ...Er… if that’s ok,” I add. It’s hard to really forget who I’m talking to.

“Do you need my permission”? He sounds amused, and I look over at him in surprise.

“Don’t I?”

He smiles in a very strange way, and I can’t tell whether or not he’s having me on. But he must be. He’s the Darkling. No one is or ever can be his equal, not in his mind. He entertains the abstract idea of a “some day,” but sometimes that’s really just a good excuse for not allowing something to happen in the here and now. Right now, he’s probably just having fun playing the role he’s chosen for himself. Must be nice to be able to pretend you’re lighter than you really are from time to time, especially for someone like him.

We walk on in silence, past a cluster of footprints from winter birds, and a track that looks like it belonged to a fox.

“Are you religious?” he asks. For a second I’m stymied by the topic change, until I remember I’d sworn to the Saints a minute ago.

“No,” I laugh. “I believe in something, I think, I just don’t have a name for it. I think the Saints were probably real, or at least based on real people, but, I don’t know, after everyone freaked out and butchered them they decided ‘hey, maybe there was something to that.’ If their powers were literal and not symbolic, they had to have been Grisha, which just adds a whole new layer of messed up to the world. Which it really didn’t need. But maybe Saint Lisbeta was just the first Corporalki brave enough to try to help someone in sight of others. Maybe Saint Petyr was just a remarkably, incredibly powerful Tidemaker, as we call them.

“I find the idea that they didn’t used to classify themselves fascinating. It makes me wonder about the limitations we put on ourselves. If I can see around the clearing, for instance, why can’t any other Summoner? Their elements are as present in the air as mine. Maybe not a Tidemaker so much, not when it’s so cold, but certainly a Squaller.

“Genya can alter flesh. I can’t believe she’s the first to have that ability, to blur the lines between two schools of power. You do… honestly I don’t even know what you do. I tried to get Baghra to explain it to me, but she just kept hitting me more than normal. Woman has anger issues.” More like issues with fruit flies who are obnoxious enough to get her attention. I rub my hand absently. It’s the last place she whacked me, and it had been a good one.

Aleksander is smiling to himself. It’s miniscule, of course, but it looks almost smug as he stares ahead. “Why am I not surprised you’d think to ask.”

 _”I’m_ surprised more people _don’t.”_ I frown. “Or at least I’d like to be. Seriously though, how does it work?” I’m suddenly animated, come to life the way I only do when an interesting question is put in front of me. “I mean technically, we do the same thing, right? Your purview is just very, very specialized, where mine is broad. I call, and you banish. But they’re both dabbling in light waves. I wish there were others who could do what you do, I could just sit and watch and....” I reign myself in, suddenly remembering where I am and who I’m talking to. “I don’t know.”

He stops and turns to me. There’s this funny little light in his eyes, like someone when they crouch down to speak to a happy child. “Would you like to see it?”

My eyes go wide, I couldn’t have stopped them if I’d wanted to, and a fraction of my excitement must show, because his diaphragm twitches with an unshed laugh.

“I wouldn’t… isn’t that rude? I mean, of course I want to, I just figured that with your history....”

“I appreciate your concern,” he says, too refined to technically be called “dry.” I want to hit him. “But it isn’t necessary. I can count on one hand the number of people in my life who have shown curiosity about my powers free of fear, Alina. You are the first who hasn’t even shown an ounce of apprehension. It’s a complement, believe me.” He sounds more dark than anything by the end.

“...So what are you waiting for?” I demand. I can’t help the excited smile on my face or the way I bounce a little on the balls of my feet any more than I could help my reaction when he offered.

His lips are turned down in a smile as he raises a hand between us, palm up, and calls a little ball of nothingness to float above it. It’s deep as ink, and yes, there’s something threatening about it, but I think that’s only because it’s coming from him. In and of itself, it doesn’t feel any less benign than the snow under my feet; simply a force of nature called to be by a person with a deep, fathomless connection to it.

Curiously, I poke at it through the light, and all the world condenses to the swirling black mass, no bigger than a mouse at its heart. It isn’t that nothing is there, it’s that my domain sort of blurs around the edges the closer it gets, until at the core of the blackness, it feels like it comes up against a wall. A place barred to me. I shake my head a little in amazement.

“Can I touch it?” I whisper.

He doesn’t say no, and I can’t look away long enough to check his face, so I just reach out, spellbound. My fingers pierce the blackness. It isn’t cold. It isn’t a void. It feels different, but I couldn’t begin to find the words to explain how. Suddenly I wish I’d been able to pay attention on the Shadow Fold, that I’d had the context to feel it as I feel this now. Is it the same as this, I wonder?

It occurs to me that I can just ask, so I do.

“No,” he says darkly. “The Shadow Fold was an act of evil.”

My hand is in the blackness, splayed as it plays over my palm, feeling its singular existence. I pull it back, his words abruptly opening the rest of the world back into being around us. “No,” I say, “It wasn’t.” My voice is strange. Hard and stubborn.

He shakes his head and we resume walking. “You haven’t lived under the curse of it all your life the way I have. There is no excuse for what he did.”

I wonder if he believes that. He certainly sounds like he does.

Then it’s like I can’t help it, I just can’t keep my stupid mouth shut. “I don’t believe in evil,” I say. “There’s ignorance, and greed, and on the better end, a lot of damage. I suspect the Fold was a result of both the former, and probably the latter, too.” I don’t stop to wonder what he might make of my tone, even before it turns clinical: “It’s safe to assume his reasons weren’t altruistic because of how rare that quality is. We can’t know whether he was aware his motives were selfish - no one is the villain of their own story - but he dabbled in shit he shouldn’t have. No one should, because no one can crack it. That means he was arrogant and maybe ignorant, but that part would have to have been willful, because I can’t see any Darkling being uneducated in the domain of his own power and the laws of what we do. Especially not someone who wants to try something so monumentally stupid. Likely, he just thought he was smart enough to be the first person to get it right. Because he was a stupid, arrogant shit,” I say, arch.

“Evil,” I scathe the word, “is a bedtime story we tell to comfort ourselves with the thought that good and bad are cleanly and easily defined. Recognizable from a distance. They aren’t.” My voice is almost frigid at the end, I’m so certain of this. “If evil strikes, it does it from the shadows. So to speak,” I add, mindful of who I’m talking to. “It warms up to you first, so you never see it coming.”

He doesn’t say anything right away, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I get the impression it’s because he doesn’t know exactly what to say. He settles on, “I would be careful who you share that though with, if I were you.” He sounds annoyed.

“I’d be careful who I share about ninety-nine percent of my thoughts with,” I deadpan. “I’d be burned at the stake for heresy, treason, sedition, and at least twelve other cardinal sins, living miracle or no. People like their worlds neat and tidy. New ideas scare them. And when people are scared… well. I don’t imagine I have to tell you what they do. I’ve been here months and the stories I’ve heard are enough to peel the skin from your bones.”

“...No,” he says. “You don’t.”

I don’t even want to try to unpack what’s in his tone, or to decipher the non-expression on his face.

“You have a unique way of looking at the world,” he observes.

“No, I don’t. Uncommon, but not unique.”

He glances over at me.

“Everything has already been done,” I say, face forward. “I can’t believe anyone is capable of a new thought. Some are just louder and more persistent than others.”

Too brightly, and solely to change the subject, I ask, “Speaking of, aren’t you worried I’m trying to lure you to your death or something, here?”

Part of me realizes what a poor choice of new topics that is, especially given the context. But perhaps he’ll find my ham-handedness somehow charming.

The almost-look on his face in what he hopefully still thinks is privacy might be called pained. More pained on my behalf than pained in general, though.

“Not especially,” he says. “But how much farther in do you plan on taking us?”

“Not too much. A few more minutes.”

We carry on in silence again, or boots crunching and murmuring over the lightly-powdered ground. Every time I breathe in through my nose, its hairs try to stick together from the cold. I love the feel of it against my skin, sharp and almost prickling.

“When is _your_ birthday?” he asks.

I wonder how novel it is to him, curiosity.

I mutter something vaguely resembling “I don’t know,” then explain about Keramzin’s policy on birthdays and how we were encouraged to forget what had come before. “It was apparently the only way to express our gratitude,” I tell him. “So much for honoring the dead.”

“Have you considered choosing a new one?”

“I have, actually,” I muse.

We reach the clearing and I have him help me unfold one of the massive, thick comforters until it’s halved over on itself lengthwise, then spread it out onto the glittering snow. It’s thick enough that it should keep us from getting frostbite for a little while.

“Maybe it would be rude to the Duke,” I say, thinking out loud. “For all its flaws, I don’t think anyone could deny that Keramzin is kind of a miracle. The Duke could have done what any other noble does and hoard his wealth, but he didn’t. Which of course made him something to be looked down on, rather than to be venerated, but that’s a tirade for another time. Honestly, though, if we were standing in front of each other, he wouldn’t recognize me. Wouldn’t have even if I still looked like a dying reed. The only people from that place who’d remember me would be the ones whose lives I made hell, so I’m not sure what kind of lip-service respect keeping that date would be worth.”

“What were you like as a child?”

I snort and look at him. “What were _you_ like as a child?”

To my surprise, he answers. “Quiet. Impatient. Thoughtful, I suppose, and solitary. Lonely. I liked anything sweet and had a fascination with animals, for a time. Particularly rare breeds.”

“The Darkling has a sweet tooth,” I say with a grin. “Who would have thought?”

“You, apparently. You keep bringing me baked goods.”

“Safe guess. What kind of monster doesn’t like sweets?”

His lips twitch, just barely, and I smile wider and lay down on my back, covering myself up to the chest with the other blanket. It’s colder, being still like this, so I ramp up the warmth around us, just enough to take the edge off the worst of the chill. He stands looking down at me, and for all the world I must seem perfectly at ease with that.

“Well?” he prompts.

I ignore him, and instead jibe, “Do you ever wish you could go back in time and punch in the throat whoever chose that name? The ‘Darkling?’ It sounds like some little fiendish trickster sprite from a fairy tale. Or maybe a socially awkward goblin.”

He arches a brow at me.

I laugh. “I was contrary, stubborn, mulish, sarcastic and dry, and generally difficult in every conceivable way. Basically exactly the way I am now, but with no filter and a lot more simmering bitterness. And getting me to eat was apparently like trying to force an act of God. Which of course makes perfect sense now.” The organism does not wish to exist outside of its natural state. Something like that. I haven’t really found any good theories on why eating is so hard for a Grisha who rejects their power.

The Darkling smiles wide, and God, but it is arresting. Something in him has shifted - he seems lighter. Yet again, I wish I had any way of knowing how much of him in a given moment was pretense. I’ve just never wished it quite so much before.

 _Dangerous, dangerous,_ goes the voice in my head, but it’s so far away right now, and I haven’t really heard it since I stood before him in his pavilion and forgot it was full of other people. ...I don’t need to listen, I think. Not right now. I can make sense of all this later.

The Darkling sits next to me and spreads the blanket over his legs, then leans back onto his hands. “Not the Summer Solstice,” he muses. At my baffled look, he clarifies, “Your birthday.”

 _”Not_ the Summer Solstice,” I parrot with disbelief.

This slip of smile is absolutely teasing. “That would be too easy.”

I scowl magnificently at him. It’s all I can do to answer, and my voice is mulish and petulant when I do, because: “I was thinking the Winter Solstice, actually.”

He _laughs,_ and it echoes through the trees and makes his throat bob and tiny lines form at the corners of his eyes, and it’s like someone sent a bolt of lightning through my chest.

His eyes sparkle as he looks at me, and I know I’m supposed to say something, but it takes me a second to remember what, because I can’t remember what words even are.

I give myself a mental shake and put my hands under my head, turning my face to the sky. It doesn’t help as much as it should, because he’s watching me, and it’s making me feel like fingers are whispering all over my skin.

When I don’t say anything fast enough, I guess, he lays down next to me. With the blanket the size it is, even folded in half, there’s just enough room that our arms aren’t quite touching, but I have to hug my right arm to my head or he’d be laying on my elbow.

“I can’t stand the heat,” I tell him honestly. “There’s that, and the Winter Solstice....” I scowl up at the sky at what I’m about to say, and it comes out in my voice. “The Summer Solstice _is_ too easy. And obvious, like smacking someone over the head with a fish. Yes, it’s the longest day of the year, and yes, I’m called the _Sun_ Summoner, but that’s not what I really am, it’s just what people want me to be. I love the green, but winter is under-appreciated, and beautiful, and if I picked the _Winter_ Solstice, it would be more appropriate because from there, every day gets longer. More like a birthday. More sun as time goes on, instead of less. At least in this part of the world.”

After a moment of watching me without the decency to even feign a shred of reticence about it, he looks up, too. “Poetic,” he remarks. “And coming up soon.”

“Yes, and their royal assfaces are kind enough to be throwing me a party without even realizing it. If I pick that day, anyway.” I frown. “Now if only I liked parties.”

“It sounds like you already have picked it.”

“...I suppose you’re right.”

“There is good news, you know.” He waits until I look at him to go on, though he doesn’t look back. “You may not enjoy parties, but at least there will be a spectacular array of desserts.”

“...I hate you so much right now.”

Quiet stretches out between us, and I can’t bring myself to get started. I’d never actually planned on doing this, it was just a collection of idle thoughts, and now that we’re both here, I don’t exactly know what to say. Everything I come up with feels too contrived, and I’ve never been great at walking the line between explaining something clearly to someone and not spoon-feeding them. I don’t understand those lines of subtlety in other people’s minds, and I don’t think I ever will.

“I don’t think I could remember the last time I did something like this if I tried,” the Darkling says quietly.

“Hm?” I ask, looking over at him. His eyes are fixed upward. “Something like what?”

“Taking time like this. Enjoying something so simple. Looking at the sky.” The words sound sincere, but I think I hear something dead under them, too. I love the stars, but how many nights would it take until I had seen them so many times that even I no longer found anything there worth looking at? “I tend to keep busy.”

He looks over at me with a smile that would melt the heart and dissolve the undergarments of a lesser woman. Something obviously shows on my otherwise face, because he frowns, just a little.

The fingers of his hand, the one nearest to me but well out of my line of sight, twitch, and then clench. That makes my decision easier.

“You know, I asked if you have a way to look more closely at the stars,” I share. “Grisha, I mean. One of the Fabrikators pulled out a telescope for me and showed me how to set it up on the roof. I stayed up there half the night. I went up again the next night, but decided pretty quickly that I wanted more, so I started to play,” I add with a quiet little laugh. “Do you know how telescopes work?” I glance at him and he gives a fractional nod. I return it, and say, “Mirrors. Four little bends in the light and you can see hundreds of miles away, just like that.” My voice turns teasing. “You can imagine the conclusion I drew.”

I bring my hands up into the air and pluck at the light as if it is a delicate harp, and I am pulling from it the first strands of a slow lullaby. The sky appears to grow closer. The stars become larger and brighter until what looked white and pure gives way to yellows and oranges and pinks, even palest blues and purples, until the sky is not filled with diamonds, but with every gem imaginable.

I hold it there, suspended and dazzling. This much is easy, I’ve done it enough. “Do you remember that night in the barn on the way here? When I started glowing?” I speak so quietly that if he were another foot away, he might not hear. There’s a spell being woven, hesitant and careful, that doesn’t want to break. “I didn’t actually mean to do that.”

“I think it’s safe to say no one there will be forgetting it,” he murmurs. His eyes are rapt on the scene above us.

I smile a little at what I choose to believe is his version of wonder. “I was sitting there, feeling the firelight, and then the moonlight, and it.... Different kinds of light feel different,” I explain. “That was when I realized it. Sunlight is the easiest to call and work with, but starlight.... It feels _better._ Familiar. Like home, maybe, if there is such a place. It’s cool, and welcoming, and steady, and even though it doesn’t come quite as naturally, it almost feels more right. I was sitting there and I got lost in the starlight. It was like the world cracked open for a second. And when you called me back and I opened my eyes… there it was.”

That hangs in the air between us like a natural downbeat, a pause before a refrain.

“Like you said,” I go on, “I have a curious mind. So I had great fun looking at the stars. I pulled the craters of the moon into detail, I picked out a dozen different shades of each color you see, bright lights and wavering ones. I saw shooting stars and glittering belts of dust. And then I found a question. One of those holes you mentioned, I guess. So off I went.”

Carefully, so carefully, I anchor the precise angles I’m holding onto my left hand, so I can use the other to point upward.

“What do you suppose is there,” I ask, the tension of concentration almost perfectly hidden from my voice, “in those dark spaces?”

“Shadow,” he says readily. It’s quiet, and I can’t read it. At least I don’t think I can, or maybe I just don’t _want_ to think I can, because it sounds like there’s too much emotion under the word, and I think it’s easier to see him as someone who just… doesn’t feel much of anything. It’s certainly how he likes to sell himself. But it’s not entirely true, is it? No, there’s a core of emotion in him, however small, that is just waiting for a chance to explode. All I know of him letting it out is in anger and grief, the times he can’t hold back.

“The birth of the stars,” I say, “the setting for the stones. What lets them live and breathe. Underappreciated, certainly, but you’d miss it the instant it wasn’t there.”

Smoothly, he props the arm opposite me under his head, elongating the lines of his body.

I clear my throat quietly and resume my grip on the light with both hands. “I need your help for this next part, and it’s going to get colder. Can I borrow your hand again?”

He looks over, and after a moment, he shifts a little to slip his hand under my neck, cupping it. I can’t control the way my stomach muscles jolt visibly at the touch, and I can’t stop my eyes fluttering closed at the way my power surges up to meet his, like it’s a child overjoyed at the return of a parent.

It takes effort, this part, even with his power. It isn’t a trick with my hands, calling something or bending it a little. It is massive, like the difference between holding a stick in my fist and trying to get my grip around the broad side of an elephant. It takes my hands, my arms, and so much concentration that I have to coach myself more than once to stay relaxed, to not go tight, to not get in the way. That it’s an act of asking and allowing, not of will and forcing. The paradox of power and skill - the more you want to call, the less hard you must try at it.

Carefully, slowly, I pull us into the blackness until pinpricks of light appear where before there was only dark, empty space. Those pinpricks become stars, and they bloom into new points of color. I hold it there, then pull again, into another spot of impenetrable ink. Further and further we go, past a bank of asteroids until-- There. The unmistakable swirl of a distant galaxy, pale green and bright orange, laying in its own vast universe of stars, each resting in a home of black.

“I’ve gone on like this for along time time,” I whisper. “On and on and on,” I say slowly, “and it’s always the same. There is no darkness out there. It’s _alive.”_

He is staring up, utterly and completely transfixed.

I wonder how long it has been since he has seen anything new.

“People lump ideas together whenever they can, because they like the world to be easy,” I murmur. “They’ll take something they’re afraid of, like the night, and bundle it up with everything else they think is bad, too. Whether it’s something as simple as cruelty or as ephemeral and full up potential as the unknown. Anything too big to understand, anything that makes them feel like it robs them of the basic power of feeling secure. Then it’s clean and black and white, so they can tell at a glance what’s good and bad, safe and dangerous. Just like evil. But nothing is that easy, and not enough people stop to question their instincts. Or the things they believe solely because someone they once trusted to shape the world for them - a parent, a friend, a priest - told them they were true.

“To them, it follows naturally that if people come along who have as deep a bond to one of those things as we do to light or dark, the ability to control them, they must be the embodiment of all the made up shit they’ve decided those things stand for.

“You asked me what I meant when I said I was aware of what people thought of me. I’ve done absolutely nothing except ignite in the Fold, and then come here to live in secrecy for months, and people are already convincing themselves that I am all things good and hopeful in the world. They know nothing about me, but they’ve decided they love or hate me. Personally. They call the night evil and inauspicious, and so they make the light pure and holy, the other side of the coin. They’re making me exempt from the hatred and fear they pile onto our kind on principal. I’m a person. Small, young, not that special aside from the fact that I have the power I do, and I’m being venerated. The Apparat’s a madman - all he needs is for me to go through a symbolic death before he’s going to start selling me as a living Saint.”

I don’t think I imagine his anger this time.

My face darkens. “They have no idea. Night and day aren’t people. The sun is an uncaring force of nature, like a hurricane or a rainstorm. A little of it is a good thing. Necessary. But send someone out into the desert for a day and then ask if they still think it’s benevolent. Take away shade, and the night, then ask them how safe they feel in that light, how nurtured and protected. What grows their food would just as happily make the world a barren, lifeless field of ash and glaciers.”

Part of me, the small part that lives only in ideas, wants to do just that, so they would have no choice but to see what I’m capable of, as if I could force them awake. The thought passes with the next puff of fog from my lips.

“I get it,” I say. _Just like I get why you want to see me as just as much of a symbol and a means to an end._ “But I want you to know, too, that I’m paying attention.” I so badly want to let a chill of warning enter my voice.

“I ask questions,” I go on. “I question everything, in fact, especially those things that seem the most obvious and easy. That’s how I find those holes in things you talked about. Out in the open, in plain sight. The flowers are pretty. The leaves, the faces. I appreciate them. But what really fascinates me is the roots. The patterns. The how and the why.”

Gently, I relax the light until the sky is once more a blanket of diamonds above us. The night seems deafeningly quiet, and the space around us suddenly vast.

“I wanted you to know: I think. And I’ve thought a lot about you. Obviously.” The pain he soaked up when he was young, for instance. Children are sponges, and that’s not something anyone can turn off. What they see and hear, about the world, and particularly about themselves, they take into their bones until it becomes their structure, the webbing inside that holds everything up. Growing up, he had two voices: his mother telling him he was better than everyone else, and that getting close to anyone, trusting anyone, meant death in every sense, and everyone else telling him that by his very nature he was wrong at a fundamental level, evil and soulless, a thing to be tolerated at best. No matter how strong the walls he built over the coming centuries, you cannot kill a voice like that. You cannot bury it under enough stone or time. Its ghost will always be there, waiting, whispering through the cracks.

I sigh quietly, “The kefta was a terrible idea. I’m not sure if I didn’t catch that before, or if I did and ignored it and went ahead with it anyway.” And I’m not sure which would be more troubling. “I think I forgot who you are, that you can’t assume good intentions from anyone. But this was why I thought of silver, and I wanted to show you. The starlight. It’s the heart of that blackness up there, peppered all through it no matter how deep you go. Even in the Shadow Fold, a place of absolute, living darkness, there are particles of light. I called on them when I was born.” I pause. “When I was made, out of blood and death and terror. And the need to protect something. That, by the way, is why--” I cut myself off, rephrasing on the fly. “People say love is a weakness - any kind of love, not just romantic - but that’s why it’s not. It’s a--”

In a single instant, I feel a stab of annoyance, realize it’s not mine, and remember that his hand is on my neck, resting warm and comfortably. I had completely forgotten. How?

I nearly pull myself off of it, but at the last moment, my muscles won’t move. So I just… don’t. It feels nice anyway. Touch.

I clear my throat and stop myself from stuttering. “It’s a vulnerability. It changes things, yes. People like you or I would sooner stab ourselves in the eyes. But you’ll never be as strong as you are when you have something to protect, and that multiplies itself exponentially when that something is another person. One person who you know in every invisible piece of you is more important than you can ever be. Maybe call it losing the fear of death. Selflessness. I don’t know.”

Anger, now, and his fingers twitch on my neck, so slight it’s almost not there. God, this is distracting.

“But... what I was saying....” It’s harder to resume myself this time. “The darkness up there,” I indicate the sky with my chin, though he still hasn’t looked away from it, “it brings the light alive, but it’s brought to life in turn. Without the dark, it wouldn’t exist. It would be locked away where no one could see, and the world would suffer without realizing it was even missing anything. It’s the perfect symbiosis. Beautiful in every sense.

“What you are,” I say. “What you mean. The symbol you carry. People like things to be simple,” I repeat, bringing us full circle, “so they stop at the first answer that seems to make sense, and they adopt it, and they aggressively decry anything that might conflict with it. But _I_ don’t think darkness is evil, or bad luck, or a curse, just because I get antsy at night when I can’t see.

“Darkness is silk,” I tell him. “It’s rest at the end of the longest days. It isn’t death, it’s a womb.” The birthplace of all things, the greatest crucible.

There is a beat, and the air draws tight. I go very, very still, as if he is a tiger standing a foot away and all I can do is pray he won’t see me.

Slowly, he slips his hand from under my neck, his fingers brushing it as if absently and leaving stinging trails. He sits up.

“Where did you come from?” he asks.

Confused, I say, “Uh....”

He turns enough to look at me. His face is… bleak? I can hardly tell, but whatever it is, it’s so intense that everything around us melts away. He asks, no, almost demands, “Who are you?”

I go cold, and fear lances through me before I have a chance to remind myself there’s no way he can know. Slowly, I push up onto my palms.

A helpless “I’m....” is all I can manage.

He turns himself so he can really look at me. “Do you believe in destiny, Alina?” There’s an edge in his voice I haven’t heard before, and it sets something in my chest grating against itself.

I consider, then answer, wary, “I believe the idea of it is pointless.”

“You don’t take comfort in the thought that that some things are meant to be? You don’t find it troubling, perhaps, that some things might be outside of your control?”

“First of all, everything is outside of my control. I’m not a God, and I take a very meta view of the world. But if things happen whether or not some idea of predetermination is real, why could it possibly matter?” You could chase fortune tellers or seers, but if destiny is destiny, then anything you might hear from them would just be part of the play, too. Any attempt you make to prepare or avoid would be pointless. Something like destiny wouldn’t come with loopholes.

I think there’s a crack in him, underneath and behind. There’s something in his eyes that’s larger than the moon and the sky.

He leans in and props himself on his hands. Except one of them is over my lap, brushing my hip. He seems completely unconcerned with how close he is. “You cannot understand.... Imagine, as smart as you are, as easily as you see through other people, that everyone around you is younger than you are by two generations or more. Children, essentially. Dull, predictable, slow, and unintelligent. Imagine if you had been doing this for a hundred years. How often do you think anything could surprise you? Or even truly interest you?”

My blood is ossifying.

“Can I trust you, Alina?”

For a moment, I blank on how to answer.

“I... suppose that depends on what with.”

The storm breaks just a little, and he quirks something like a half-smile, nothing more than a twitch. I think it’s a little sad. “A strange answer.”

“From a strange woman?”

He nods and murmurs, “A unique woman, certainly.”

When I can’t pretend that this staring contest is normal any longer, I prompt, “What was it you were thinking?”

But something in his eyes shifts, like a switch in a railway, and he goes utterly sober.

“Who are you?” he repeats. It’s nothing but a murmur.

I have to clear my throat. “Uh… how long do you have?” I joke weakly, pathetically hoarse. I want to lean away, I do, but it’s like there’s a wall behind me.

“For this? Eternity.”

The crystal gray of his eyes shifts again, then his mouth is on mine, and it isn’t like it was in the library. It isn’t like it was by the lake. It isn’t even exactly like it was the night after the fete.

He’s so _hungry,_ the explosion of hundreds of years of denied humanity clamoring to come out. The only time I’ve seen him start to come apart like this was when he was in a rage, and once on the Shadow Fold, when he thought Alina, “his” Alina, was as good as dead, her power drained away.

He leans into me and puts a hand on the small of my back, and I realize I’m meeting him without meaning to when my head obliges by tilting back.

My tongue finds his, halting and hesitant. My breath ignites, my chest brushes his, and he settles himself over me, urging me to lay down.

There’s enough left in me, enough left _of_ me, that I panic. This _cannot happen._

I yank away. I stand up, and I turn my back to him, panting, my eyes wide and my hand going to my mouth.

When he starts to stand, when he says my name, I take off through the trees as fast as I can without running. He doesn’t follow. He doesn’t even move from the blanket. His breath is puffing out fast and hot into the air. He just looks... with no one there to see, he looks lost, and it almost undoes me.

When I get back to the Little Palace, Ivan, of all goddamned people, is sauntering out through the main doors. I shove past him with a hateful glare, because I know what I look like, my skin flush and my eyes dark. He’ll find the the Darkling in the direction I came from, and I’ll never hear the end of it. In addition to being insufferable, he’ll be the consummate mother who’s out to get the trollop who isn’t good enough for her precious son.

This had God damned well better end up proving worth it, because if I just made everything worse....

I won’t think about that. Not tonight.

Which becomes easy, because I feel Ivan stop outside the doors like he's been frozen. Then he turns around and follows me.

I'm pretty sure I dislocated one of his ribs earlier. Maybe he'll give me an excuse now to try and crack one. I'm all sharp edges and frenetic clawing inside, like a madwoman pulling at her hair and needing anything to make sense for a minute. I want the excuse to exercise it, to exhaust myself until I can't hear it anymore, and I can think of no better way than a rematch of our earlier fight. It would go horribly, I’m too wound up. Or maybe I’d find some magical eye in this storm and turn into a combat master.

I snort at myself.

Ivan takes his time catching up to me, and there's something intense and focused on his face that has my brows pinching together. What the ever-loving....

When I get up the stairs and far enough down the hall that we're well out of sight of the Palace's main room, I find out. Because he comes up behind me and stops me by putting his hands on my hips in a very particular way. He leans down so his mouth is next to my ear and says, his voice low and rumbling, "Tell me to stop."

...He cannot fucking be serious.

I turn my head to rip him a new asshole, but he bends and puts a hand on my leg, under my kefta. I go stiff as a board. It's from rage at the presumption, it's from complete shock, and it's from something else that only becomes apparent as his hand moves up my calf: I don't hate it. Not entirely. I don't love it, but I don't hate it, and there is a stir of something in me, the whisper of how easy this could be, to forget. Just for a little while.

I nearly turn around and break his nose then and there.

...But I don't. Not right away. It's like morbid curiosity. Which is stupid, because it's _not_ morbid curiosity. It's something screaming in my chest for _one fucking thing_ to be simple. For a way to stop thinking so much about everything, about myself, about games and playing a game of chess with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on the line, about how complicated-- I can't even think his name, not right now. I can't even think the word "him."

It wouldn’t get much more simple than Ivan. Just like this could be simple, right now. He’s attracted to me, but physical interest is where it starts and stops, and if there’s one person in the world who would literally break his own hand before he told anyone about this, it’s Ivan.

A voice in my mind, growing quieter every instant, whispers that the reason for his discretion is why this is a horrific idea.

It’s so easy, thinking about these things idly, abstractly. But then his hand reaches the lower part of my thigh and wraps around its inside, and for a split second, my mind goes empty. Completely, blissfully empty, giving way to sensation.

My head tips back against his chest. It isn't permission. It's not. It's surrender to a single moment of relief so intense that if I were prone to tears, I would start to cry.

He, of course, doesn't know any of that. All he knows is that it looks like I've just said "ok." So something caged in him explodes like a match to gunpowder, and he pulls me into the nearest room. 

It isn't comfortable at first, it isn't easy or organic, but it starts to feel good soon enough, and that feeling is such an easy thing to fall into. I don’t have to be in control, I don’t have to watch myself like a hawk, to measure every twitch of facial muscles and vocal inflection and breath. I don’t have to be flat and uninterested to make it easier to avoid giving something away. I don’t have to have a single thought in my head. I don't have to be anything at all, because he is more than happy to take control.

When it's over and everything is melting away into perfect, heavy unconsciousness, all that's left in my head is the knowledge that for the first time since I found myself on a dirt highway at the top of a cresting hill in front of a boundless wall of black, I feel truly, entirely light, and unburdened.

My last thought, like a whisper of a dream, is that the moon looks unusually bright tonight.

 

* * * * *

 

He's the only one up and dressing. When he points out she needs to get to her room, she doesn’t react. The servants know to ignore discreet sounds of this sort of thing in these rooms from time to time, just like the students know not to make use of them often. But she is hardly any other Grisha. They can’t take the chance she’ll be found like this.

He looks over his shoulder to find her rolling onto her side with a petulant kind of grunt, pulling the bed’s comforter with her and wrapping herself in it. Because apparently she just thinks she's going to spend the night here. Her trousers are still dangling from one leg.

He stares at her flatly, but then just laughs a little to himself, quiet enough that she won’t be able to hear.

He finishes dressing, then tucks out into the hallway. When he’s certain they’re alone, he goes back inside, gathers her clothes, then picks her up, blanket and all, ignoring her angry little whine and the way her forehead pinches up, and carries her to her room.

He looks down at her as they go. He’d die before he told her, but she’s actually beautiful like this. She’s always beautiful, of course, she’s Grisha. And it’s not like she walks around with a scowl on her face all day, but there’s something about her now. She looks so… unguarded. Untroubled. Human, even. Real. He almost feels like he shouldn’t be looking, like he’s seeing something private. In the same moment, he wants to see her like this more often, as if there’s something he could do about it personally.

She doesn’t stir, not while he carries her, or when he lays her down on her bed. For a moment, he stays poised over her, weight on his hands where they frame her on the mattress. He absently brushes an errant lock of hair from her face before he can catch himself. He excuses the contact by moving his hand to her neck to heal the bruising he left there with his mouth. Her skin is flushed, blood still crowding at the surface. It suits her. She looks alive and vital. Warm. Inviting.

He stands abruptly. He has things to do.

He goes to her washroom and wets a cloth, then unbinds her from her cocoon just enough to swap out the guestroom blanket for her own. She manages an impressive look of annoyance, which itself is impressive - he doesn’t think she’s even completely awake anymore.

She is a contradiction in terms, even now. No, _especially_ now. She had clearly never been to bed with anyone, but the way she acted before and during spoke of nothing but experience. That doesn’t mean she knows she needs to take care of herself after bedding someone. Or how. Or that she’d do it, if there was any chance she was going to move an inch before morning. So he brushes his power over her belly just long enough to clean away anything that might lead to an infection later - or a pregnancy - and wipes between her legs with the cloth.

She stirs as he tends to her, first in irritation, then in pleasure. It’s a near thing, getting himself to leave. But twice in a row her first time, whether he Healed her or helped her with his powers or not, is enough. (And this really was monumentally stupid. She’s going to be after him like a puppy now.)

And he really does have things to do.

He doesn’t look at the fact that he has to repeat that to himself over and again to get himself out of the room, where he folds the blanket and lays it neatly over the end of the mattress in the guest room, then down the hall, and down the stairs.

...Where he’d be cursing to the Saints, if he believed in them. Because he’s just realized he has to tell the Darkling about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I made up that stuff about Saints Lisbeta and Petyr, idr what they were associated with. A cursory search online didn’t give me any information about specific Saints of the Grishaverse.
> 
> \- I had to strip the Alina/Ivan scene to its bones because of some misunderstandings about the relationship tags (namely that "Ivan/Alina" and "ultimate relationship tbd" were in them), so I'm not sure exactly what's going to end up happening between the two at the moment, but regardless of what direction I go in, Alina still has a long way to go as a character.
> 
> \- - -
> 
> Remember the "demisexual MC" tag? Here she be.
> 
> I think demisexual is not one of the more common ones, so briefly and super watered down: demi people (like me, in case you're worried I'm talking out of my rear #Represent #OrWhatHaveYou? #IDon'tKnowHowToYouth) don't tend to be physically attracted to a person until they're emotionally attracted to them. This isn't a passionate-kiss-at-the-end-of-the-first-date type. 
> 
> While it's true that their sex drives and places on the sexual spectrum can vary wildly like anyone else's (*hat tip to asexuals*), they still feel arousal and still like sex, but in general it can just be pretty "eh" until they really get into it. The clearest way I can think to put it is also the most crass: have you ever started to get busy with yourself just because? Like "meh, I have nothing better to do" or something similar? At first it's just going through the motions, but as you carry on, it starts to feel pretty damn decent, so you start to genuinely get into it. That's sex for a demi, unless they're with someone they are hardcore into emotionally/mentally.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 11/28/18: l'sex scene stripped to its bare basics (no pun). Both Alina POV and Ivan POV will go up in my scrap fic at some point. For now, this is the final form of the scene. Might be a little confusing, what with the missing deets of events, but my arse needs a break.


	19. Really, Though. I Lived Under A Rock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven’t yet, please have a glance at the relationship tags, rating, archive warnings and, if there’s _anything_ you might not like to see in a fic, the regular tags, too.
> 
> In general, it’s wise to do this for every fic you read. It’s a good idea to revisit them from time to time, too, since things can change as the story is written. (Ivan/Alina was not one of those things. I planned that from day one and tagged accordingly.)
> 
> -
> 
> For those who may not know, the scene with Ivan in the last chapter has been gutted. The redo starts at, “Which is easy”. For plot and character development reasons, the thing will still happen, but will probably be redone when I can get enough distance from it to read and edit objectively.

The Hall is deserted at this hour, but the fire is kept stoked against the chill, and the samovars filled and heated, should anyone come down looking for tea in the late hours of the night. Ivan walks past the Oprichniki flanking the doors to the Darkling’s quarters without acknowledging them, as is his practice.

He gives a quiet rap on the door to the Darkling’s private chambers and pauses only a moment before going in. Ivan isn’t worried about disturbing him - the Darkling won’t retire for hours yet. He sleeps only a few hours each night, something only Ivan and the most senior Oprichniki know.

The Darkling is seated in a chair before the fire, largely out of sight of the door, but he knows it will be obvious he’s doing nothing but staring into the flames, a glass of kvas in one hand. Perhaps Ivan will find it strange; he drinks so rarely. He doesn’t much see a point, and in general he likes to keep a clear head. Right now, however, that is just about the last thing he wants.

“I would have expected you to be asleep,” he remarks without moving.

Ivan bows, though he knows the Darkling won’t see it. “I meant to be.” His pause is barely perceptible. “But I ran into Starkov. We.... I made certain we were discreet, Soverenyi.”

The Darkling says nothing. For a long time, he says nothing.

He puts his glass down so he won’t crush it in his hand.

“Will this be happening again?” He asks.

“...I don’t know, Soverenyi.” Ivan clears his throat, and forces spine into his voice. “I was her first.”

The Darkling’s blood catches fire.

“And how was it?” he asks. His rage is barely kept out of his voice.

It’s a few seconds before Ivan can answer, and when he does, confusion is moulding his face. “...Strange. Like everything else about her. She didn’t warn me, and if she hadn't reacted the way she did, I still wouldn't know." He pauses. He's never had a problem telling the Darkling anything. He would never lie to him, never keep anything from him. Even if he ever got the fool idea that he wanted to - which he never would - he'd know better; the Darkling always finds out what he wants to know. But telling him this is... difficult. He fights the urge to give a roll of his shoulder. "She didn't act like she'd never done it before. But I saw the proof myself, and I felt it. If I'd even suspected, I never would have touched her.”

 _Did you hurt her?_  the Darkling wants to ask cruelly. He wants to do a lot of things, mostly to the man standing behind him. What he does is say, “Get some rest, Ivan.”  _Now. Before I cut you down._

Ivan hesitates only a moment before bowing again, repeating the honorific, and leaving.

The Darkling’s fingers dig painfully into the arms of the chair, and in the privacy of his rooms, the shadows cast by the fire seem to hiss and spit.

 

* * * * *

 

The Darkling is up and pacing. He doesn’t care to remember the last time he was so angry.

What did she hope to accomplish? Did she seek to tell him that he isn’t the one in control? Did she want to show him she didn’t want him? He had felt her fear, but he had felt her desire, too, and it was as real as his own, if a shadow of it. But that was all it could be, young as she was. She couldn’t know yet what it was to truly want or need anything, never mind another person. 

Ivan is a passable Second. His loyalty is singular, and he parrots the Darkling’s thinking and wishes well. Yet part of him wants to kill the man. Another part of him wants to go upstairs, drag her out of bed, and demand to know what asinine game she thinks she’s playing. With  _him._  He thought better of her, he thought she may not be as foolish as he has come to expect from others. He wants--

He closes his eyes and slowly, so slowly, compresses the worst of his anger. He pushes it down, but it doesn’t want to stay there.

This is what comes of trusting someone. This is what comes of even  _considering_  giving a person that trust. All you have to do is conceive of it, and they take the first opening to put a knife between your ribs. He knows better than this. He was taught better, he has lived better. But he allowed himself a single hope, one in all these years, one selfish desire, and this is what comes of it.

Part of him wants to kill her.

The rest of him understands that this doesn't make sense. Alina doesn't operate this way. She keeps her own counsel as if it were religion, yes, but she is a direct thing. If she wanted to send him a message, she wouldn’t have done it like this. She would have stormed into his chambers and delivered it to his face in plain language, while giving away much more of herself in the process than she intended to.

...Which means that as much as he may want to believe otherwise, what she did with Ivan had nothing to do with him.  
  
He isn’t certain which is worse.

But then he remembers what she told him earlier, and it stops him dead.

_Touch is too important to lie about. Maybe I think it’s the one thing that should always be honest, I don’t know. You can’t stop people from lying with their words, sometimes with their eyes or faces or body language. But you don’t have to let them touch you. Not if they don’t mean it._

_And if they do?_  he had asked.

_That’s just worse, isn’t it?_

His gut twists.

She is easy to understand, after all. And a bit too much like him, perhaps. She isn’t in denial about what she wants, no. And it is precisely because of that that she had gone to Ivan. Because his Second doesn’t matter to her.

Not like he does. Not like she wants him to, perhaps.

He tucks that away with relishing care, his mind already roaming the paths ahead.

The only question left is her virginity. She was upset when she left him in the forest, but had she been upset enough to throw something away she had guarded for so long? That didn’t fit, not with her, and if a thing doesn’t fit, it’s because you aren’t considering all the pieces. The other option is that her virginity simply meant little to her, perhaps enough to disregard all together. But if that were the case, and if she could turn to bedding someone to help her cope when she was nearing a breaking point, then why hold it back for so long in the first place? She has not had an easy life, she must have always felt alone; there is no chance she has simply never been pushed so far before. So if it meant so little to her, why wouldn’t she have…?

The boy.

The one who called her power so strongly that she used the Cut on the Shadow Fold. The one she doesn’t like to talk about.

The Darkling’s nails dig into his palm.

 

* * * * *

 

I dismiss the servant who comes to wake me.

I ignore a quiet knock on my door some time later.

It seems I’ve decided to take the day off. A smile curls over my face from ear to ear at the thought, and after that, I can’t stop grinning.

The boy knows how to impart an afterglow.

Eventually, I ring for a bath and a light meal. Once I’m clean, I lay out a towel and summon enough of a warm cloud that I can comfortably sit nude on the floor, passively stretching my legs while I nibble at the food and read a book that’s been sitting at the bottom of my drawer for months. It has nothing to do with science or history or culture or politics. It’s a fiction, in fact. I found it lost on a shelf behind other books in the Grand Palace, covered in dust. It’s supposed to be a romance, and it’s so bad that it has me laughing every other page. At one point, I count three references to a “heaving bosom” within as many inches of text.

Some time in the afternoon, Genya wakes me from a nap, looming over me and scrutinizing my face. She can’t be six inches away, peering at me; I jerk back in surprise when I open my eyes and she’s just… there.

“Are you sick?” she asks.

“No, I’m taking the day off,” I defend, trying not to look agog.

She looks at me shrewdly now. “So then dinner either went very well, or very poorly.”

I scowl gloriously. “My world does not revolve around--” I cut myself off. “You’re ruining my good mood!” I huck a pillow at her, which she catches.

An entirely too knowing look spreads over her face. “It went  _well,_  then.”

“How dare you.”

Her face lights up and she hops onto the bed, letting herself bounce. “Darling, I am  _made_  of questions right now,” she effuses.

“Don’t you go all gossip monger on me!” I defend. I  _try_  to defend. Valliently. But it’s made difficult by the fact that the stupid grin is twisting at the corners of my mouth despite my attempt to beat it back.

“How about a trade?” She suggests, eager and sly at once. “I have news that will absolutely make the rest of your day. Week, even.”

“You first,” I demand mulishly. I’ve managed to sit up, hunched over, and I gracelessly push my mess of hair back out of my face. Genya gives it a sympathetic glance, as if it is an urchin I am neglecting to feed or clothe. I hold back a roll of my eyes until I can hide it behind a stretch of my arms above my head.

Her smile grows to borderline radiant. She looks like I’m five and she’s about to surprise me with a pony. She leans in. “Ivan has been sent away.”

I stop mid-stretch.

I look at her.

“Come again?” I ask.

Her elation falters, and a query flashes behind her eyes, which I dismiss by pretending I don’t see it. Because if, as far as I know, there is absolutely no connection here for her to make, why would I pay is any special attention?

I’m being sloppy. I’m  _letting_  myself be sloppy because I’m in such a good mood. Or was. That, and it’s a messy consequence of letting people in.

“Is that… normal?” I ask.

She shrugs, feigning something like nonchalance now that I’m clearly not going to squeal in glee. There are knives of livid curiosity buried behind her eyes. “It happens sometimes, but I wouldn’t say it’s common.”

“...Huh,” I say.

The Darkling knows, then.

Ivan probably told him.

Bag. Of. Dicks.

I don’t even know which one I’m swearing at.

But then I remember who I’m dealing with, and exactly how bad this could be.

“Your turn,” Genya crows, and I’m snapped back to the present, a ceaseless string of mental expletives cut off. Her expression is perfectly schooled to the moment, but I can see it there, how much I’m giving her to chew on later. “What happened last night?”

“We ate dinner,” I say dryly. “And talked about clothes. Then we had a midnight picnic, except it wasn't midnight and there was no food. And it was outside, where we couldn’t have done anything you're thinking of without literally freezing to death.”

She narrows her eyes at me. "If you don’t give me details, I’m going to sneak into your room at night and turn your hair black. Everyone will assume you’re trying to look like him. And it would play havoc with your complexion.”

I flop back onto the bed with a dramatic groan as if I find the very idea of intrigue at this time of the afternoon exhausting.

In the end, I tell her I kissed someone,  _not_  the Darkling, and refuse to tell her who. I don’t know how, but this is going to blow up in my face later. She accepts the yarn, at least, and tries to seem overjoyed, despite the fact that I won't give her any real information. All I can see the whole time she's smiling and her eyes are sparkling is the instant of worry that flashed over her face before she could hide it. I wish I could spare her that, but the truth certainly wouldn’t make her feel better.

It isn't knowing it was a bad idea, or this new fear of the consequences that tells me I might have really done something... I won't say "wrong," but certainly ill-advised. Selfish. It's knowing that I don't want to see the look on Genya's face if she found out. It's knowing the warnings that would pour out of her. Genya, the woman who has balanced the demands of men of power since she was a child.

 

* * * * *

 

From the moment I leave my rooms, it’s all I can do to contain my fury. When I get to the doors that lead to the Darkling’s chambers and they aren’t immediately opened for me, I slowly look over at one of the oprichniki standing there, and I stop trying.

After a standoff that lasts roughly three seconds, he suddenly can’t move fast enough. He utters a pardon when he has to reach across me to open his door.

I find the Darkling in the War Room sitting at the table and speaking with two First Army soldiers. One man is short and stocky with shaggy blond hair, and the other is a brunette with broad shoulders. For just a moment, my heart stops. But it isn’t Mal, of course it isn’t. In the same instant I realize that, I also realize he hasn’t even crossed my mind enough in weeks for me to  _realize_  he wasn’t crossing my mind.

“Out,” I order, staring at the Darkling. He doesn’t look back at me. I think he might be angry.

Good.

The soldiers stand on reflex, but stop halfway and look from me to the Darkling, uncertain. He says with a disinterest I find transparent, “You heard the Sun Summoner.”

The moment the door is closed behind the men, I walk up to him and demand, “You  _sent him away?”_

For just a second, an instant, really, I would swear he finds something  _funny._

He shuffles through papers as if he’s occupied. It reminds me of how I pretend I’m reading when someone’s saying something asinine to me or I want them to go away.

“He had an assignment,” he answers coolly. “It has been planned for over a week.”

“Bullshit. You expect me to believe he just  _happened_  to have a job planned that just  _happened_  to require him leaving this morning, of all fucking days?”

“You’ll want to watch your tone, Alina,” he warns, “and your language. I’ve been indulgent with you, perhaps too much so, but I have my limits. I don’t recommend you test them. As for the rest, I don’t really care what you believe. Since apparently you need this said, I am under no obligation to justify what I choose to do with my own people. Least of all to you.”

I rankle immediately. Which is what he wants. My response, however, is still to shout, heedless of anyone overhearing, “Can you try to not be an emotionally constipated thirteen year-old for five minutes?”

He looks up. Slowly. It would have literally any other person in the world shitting themselves on the spot.

It just makes me more angry.

I snap, “Don’t look at me like that. I am not the idiot King or some reverential underling or advisor or soldier. You’re not going to cow me into place, and you’re not going to scare me. You’re going to give me straight fucking answer. Are you even capable of that?” I’m yelling again by the end. If he’s concerned about anyone overhearing, he doesn’t show it.

Glacially, his voice snapping with control, he stands and says, “Difficult as this will apparently be for you to believe, my military decisions are not based on who you let between your legs.”

The air goes cold as all the heat sucks in toward me.

I don't think. I don't even know what I'm doing until his head has snapped to one side.

And then all I can do is stand there, flabbergasted.

I hit him. I hit the Darkling.  _I punched him in the face._

I don't lose my temper like this, and it knocks me so far off balance that all I can think to do is surround myself in a cloak of defensiveness.

Stuck in a single moment, I lean into my outrage. “You fucking child,” I accuse.

“Did you just  _hit_  me?” He asks it very much like, ‘Yes, I just lived through it, and I still don’t think I believe it.’

“Did it work?” I retort immediately.

The cold gray in his eyes is snapping, and he’s going tight at the edges, his hands clenching, his shoulders tensing. He’s angry, but it isn’t nearly as satisfying as I had hoped. He pulls it inward and plays it expertly. “...Alright, Alina. You so badly want to do this? You can start by explaining yourself.”

I take issue with his phrasing, but have to admit the “request” is fair. He’s acting like an infant, but so am I, and the truth is we had a moment of connection last night. I walked away. And then I slept with his Second in Command. Arguably, objectively, pretty much a dick move.

We stand off against one another in silence, and then all I can do is just… deflate. I back up and sit down on a chair one of the soldiers vacated, too rushed when they left to even push them back into the table. I drop my head into my hands.

“I didn’t go looking for him, if that helps at all,” I say feebly. It’s true, but it also amounts to an excuse, and I hate those.

I drop my hands, but leave my head bent, and stay hunched over, my arms on my knees. Aleksander just stands there, waiting. I imagine I can feel him simmering, but how much of that is wishful thinking, I can’t know.

“Everything he is, he wears on his sleeve. He's capable, arrogant, more or less an ass. Singularly dedicated. Even that core of pain he's carved out and tried to replace with anger. He’s simple," I say, as if that one word explains everything. To me, it does. "Last night, after.... I ran into him, and it turned out... I really needed simple," I say, my voice gone almost small. "We’re not going to pick out drapes or anything, I just....”

I have no idea where to go with this. Everything I can think of to say sounds feeble, each thing more so than the last. The truth is that objectively, there is no excuse for what I did. But I’m not a machine, and that’s the part of the equation I don’t know how to explain, because this kind of behavior is something I left behind a long time ago. I'm not subject to this kind of impulsivity, I don't let myself get into positions where my emotions take over, where they storm so hard that I have to seek an outlet or risk imploding. I understand when it happens to other people, because they don't tend to themselves the way I do; the point is it doesn't happen to  _me,_  so trying to justify exactly what happened just leaves me feeling lost in the weeds. And the thing is, except for this conversation, and assuming Ivan isn’t on the slats as a result of what we did, I wouldn’t take it back for pretty much anything. I had needed it in a very real way, and without it.... If I had been willing in the moment to go to bed with him, I can only guess how I might have ended up detonating later on, instead. It had been a wake-up call and a sort of salvation all at once.

So I suppose if I can’t excuse it, I can at least try to explain.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I say to the floor, voice subdued and quiet. “I’m not supposed to be the Sun Summoner, or to be Grisha, or to wear black. I'm not supposed to be salvation, or a pawn, or a key, or any of a dozen other things anyone wants me to be, and," my voice twists with dark bitterness, "I know enough of what’s coming to know that I don’t want any of it. But I  _am_  here, and I  _am_  those things, and so I’m doing my best, but sometimes....” I trail off, my tone painful and pinched and almost warning.

I look up at him. “Everything is complicated now. You more than anything. And last night, you weren’t just asking me for a night." If he feels affronted at my absolute certainty of that, he doesn't show it. He doesn't look like he feels the need to deny it, either, which is a whole other issue that I can't even begin to think about right now. It had taken him time, I had thought, to realize the extent of what he wanted from Alina personally. "But I don't know you. I don't know anything about you except that you have so many secrets it makes my head spin and my stomach turn like I'm looking down the edge of a cliff in a high wind. And the worst part of it is, I feel like a lot of those secrets? They have to do with me. So on top of everything else, and believe me there is a  _lot_  of everything else, frankly I'm kind of pissed off that you even asked. And insulted. Which is really inconvenient because I also feel guilty even though I know I shouldn't. I've been clear with you," I enunciate. "I have not batted my eyelashes or looked at you sideways or given you any reason to think I was playing some kind of game, and I don't know what your deal is, but I told you no when you kissed me, and I did it for a reason."  
  
I take a very real, very steadying breath. "You need me," I say, matter-of-fact and free of implication. "And that itself is a labyrinth, but setting that part of it aside for a moment, I think you don't understand exactly how  _much_  you need me, or at least not in what way. Which I can say, because I don't understand it, either." I shake my head. "I feel like I'm fucking drowning from it half the time. I look at you, and you are as ancient and as vast and as unknowable as the deep sea, and nothing about you fits.

"I'm not talking about power, or influence, or the fact that I can make my fingers twinkle on command. What you need from me, I mean. I know you want those things, but this is something personal, the thing that's actually important, and if I know one goddamned thing right now, it's that  _nothing_ ," I say, nearly bearing my teeth with the ferocity of it, "can get in the way of that."

I realize I'm breathing hard, and that I'm on my feet. I don't remember standing up. I cast my eyes down, lost for a moment, and take a step back, resuming my chair.

Calmly, I tell him, "I feel like I’m missing pieces to you. There are holes when I look at you. It’s like I live in one world,  _we_  all live in one world, one reality, and you occupy another, and they just don’t line up. I get vertigo when I'm around you, which is obnoxious, because I actually really enjoy your company. When you're not being infuriating." I pause, and add half sheepishly, "Which you can probably relate to since I showed up." I pause, and sigh wearily. "Then again, maybe I'm giving myself too much credit." And the thing is, I said  _we_ , but I'm not one of them, just like I don't fit with him, either, not precisely. But unlike anyone else, when I'm around him, I feel something like a sense of sameness, of familiarity. But it's always chased by the crush of that unknowable sea. He's human, but he's also something else, and maybe that's it. Maybe I look at him and I see not one thing, and not exactly another, either. Like me. Well, sort of.

"You have goals and plans," I go on, "I can feel them in the air around you, so thick sometimes I would swear I could reach out and touch them. And they're important." I pause again, as if steeling myself. If I'm being honest, that's exactly what I'm doing. "And I think that at least some of them have to do with me.”

Something about his eyes is nearly fanatic, and absolutely hungry. It almost makes me stop, but he is cracked open, the light showing through, and I don't know when I'll get a chance like this again. More than that, it's as if whatever I’m seeing behind his face is the pull of gravity, and by the time I realize what’s happening, I’m already falling into the chasm with nothing to grab on to.

Oddly, Mal flashes through my mind, there and gone in an instant, along with an old, distant sort of ache.

"I care about you," I tell the Darkling, the boy, the lost, angry man, and I realize that I mean it, utterly and completely and without reservation. "That doesn't mean to me what it would mean to most people. I don't work the way they do, and I'm sorry if that's inconvenient," but only a little, because for everything else he is, as wounded and alone, he's also kind of an arrogant, entitled ass, "but it's what you've got."

I stop again, but he just watches in silence. I get the distinct feeling he's waiting for something specific, and worse, that I'm about to hand it to him. That I'm about to put my foot into a bear trap even as I stare right at it, knowing it's there and waiting.

“I know,” I say quietly. I watch him as he watches me, and I let him stew over what that might mean for a for far too long before I go on. Something shifts as he does, and I think perhaps I might not be quite so close to what he's expecting, at least. “When my friend was a child, you chose her because she was talented. I imagine it was a perfection you deemed a stroke of divine providence that it was apparent how beautiful she'd become, too. So you picked her. You knew what the King was like, too, and--” I laugh, the sound bitter and self-deprecating. “Do you know what I want to say? I want to say ‘you put her there anyway.’ But I can’t say that, because that’s  _why_  you put her there. You…” I stop, for a moment too angry to go on, “you  _gave her to him,”_  I scathe. “Like a chair. Or a book, or a spoon. Because it suited your ends.”

His face has gone calm in a way I understand should terrify me, but all it does is make me more insistent, more foolish, and more headstrong. I have kept too many secrets for too long, and they are dangerously close to the surface, clambering over one another to break the skin.

“I’ve seen the records,” I say, as if that explains everything. “I know what you’ve done, lifetime after lifetime, you and all your ancestors. I know you’re the reason Ravka still stands, and I know you make it so by turning Kings into invalids. It’s clever,” I admit. “Early deaths would raise questions, but a lingering illness? One that lets them function, but gives them reason to pass the day-to-day handling of the Kingdom to someone who already knows how to take care of it? The Princes certainly wouldn’t step in, they’ve almost all been as useless or incompetent as their fathers, and I can’t help but wonder how much that might have needed helping along from time to time.” I pause. “Then again, you’d probably tell me I’d be surprised how well they tended to that just fine on their own.”

It’s difficult to quantify how exactly a person who isn’t moving can go still, but that’s what he does. Like a rock. There’s a razor’s edge in his eyes, and I wonder for just a moment if I should be afraid. But I wouldn’t stop now, not for anything.

“You've wondered how I know what I do about you. There are lots of reasons. But this one? Most people assume you grew up in luxury, being the son of who you are, but I saw everything I needed to on the road here. You sat and slept on the ground with the rest of us as if it was familiar. You ate no more than your pithing share of the rations with just as much acceptance. You can't teach that. You've lived this life," I gesture around us, "long enough that no one who has never known what it was to..." I huff, "to not know if they'd be alive two days from now, and who didn't have a chance to see you the way I did would ever guess, but I I knew what I saw, even if it didn't make sense."

I look up at him, guileless. "I can hardly imagine what your life has been like since then, but I know what I saw, and I know what I see. You keep yourself removed and apart, working these bigger angles and these long plans while the people you're risking yourself in secret to protect call you a soulless monster. I won't pretend to understand what that life would do to a person day to day, especially not to a person like you, and given how you look I think it's safe to assume you’ll be at it longer than anyone before you.

"All of that is true. So is the fact that justification is a slippery slope. I don't have to be able to quantify exactly how a thing is wrong to know that’s exactly what it is, or that it's easy to justify doing horrific things when your only real audience is yourself. I think you live in an echo chamber, of sorts, and that would be absolutely deadly to any real sense of perspective.

"There had to have been another way. You put Genya up to be raped and abandoned, alone in plain sight, just like you, in a way, as a singular sacrifice for the good of what you have planned.

“Go ahead and think, ‘You’re young, you haven’t learned yet.’ But if I can be young and naive, then you can be old and ossified, and I can promise you, you come with your own set of blind spots. The difference is, I know every moment that it’s possible I’m wrong, not as an abstract idea but as a reality. Do you? There's a better way or at least a different way almost one hundred percent of the time, and if you look at a situation and think it's the one percent, it's more likely that you're just missing something.” I feel a shiver of nervousness at my phrasing, but I won't apologize for it.

"Your forefathers didn't all have beautiful young Grisha they could throw at the Kings, and even if they had, they wouldn't have repeated the same method of delivery every generation. It would be too risky. You didn't  _have_ to do to her what you did, even if it provided you a greater-than-normal advantage."

I have absolutely no idea what I’m seeing on his face, but it is as white-hot as the burning heart of a star and as pitiless as the black of space around it. I wish I could say it was anything so comforting as ‘unsettling.’

I gentle my tone considerably, to be safe. “You can play a person like an instrument, I’ve gathered that much. And she wouldn’t suffer this in silence, not in the beginning, especially because I don’t get the impression he’d have waited until she was what any decent person would consider an appropriate age.” Nausea turns my stomach. I have tried so hard not to really think about this, for this very reason. I don’t want to feel sick over something I can’t change. Best to save it until I can pluck the fruit, then shove it straight up an appropriate party’s backside. “So tell me. You put her there. Did you then, when she inevitably came to you for help, realize that maybe you'd made an unnecessary decision? Or did you prefer to stay on the road _you_ had already set out on, and convince her that she wanted to stay? Did you already have her so well trained that she even thought it was her own idea?”

I wait, doing nothing but watching him as he watches me. He really is like a quail. A deadly, terrifying, murderous quail.

“...Yes,” he says quietly.

I close my eyes, my brows pinching together as something like a single, dry sob jerks its way through me. It’s from pain, yes, because his admission somehow makes this much more real. But it’s also from relief: he gave me an honest answer. It’s hope all mixed up with something not unlike heartbreak on behalf of someone who was as good as murdered years ago, and who deserved so much better.

Silently, he steps closer.

“She's so loyal,” I whisper, “I bet she’s never even put together that you knew it would happen from the beginning.”

"No," he confirms.

Slowly, I sit up, and I look at him. “You told yourself you didn’t have that luxury of asking for permission or volunteers, right? You play your music and we dance to it. You sing and we fall in line. We make it easy. And if we don't… sorry,” I say with a shrug. “Sorry you don’t have the vision necessary. Sorry you don’t agree. I’m doing what’s best. If you have a scrap of reason in you, eventually you’ll see that. If you don't, the future will bowl over you and you'll be forgotten. Part of you probably even likes it when they get angry, because at least that's something you understand. Familiar territory. People's ire, or fear, or even disgust. You hate it, and you probably hate them for it, but it's what you know, and we tend toward what we know, even if it's nothing but poison.

“I don’t want my decisions made for me. And I wonder, sometimes, if any of us-- any of  _them_ , if you prefer, at least to a greater extent, are even people to you, and DL... that is so dangerous. And I don't think you understand why," I say. I sound apologetic.

Still he says nothing. He crosses his arms comfortably and leans back, gone from sharp to calm, but still watching with eyes that cut like surgical steel. Seeing too much, or perhaps seeing the wrong things. I can't know, not with someone who's so Goddamned smart.

I sigh to myself and lower my arms back to rest on my legs. I twine my fingers and take a moment before going on. “The interest you show in me, the personal interest… I think it's real, but I also think it isn't. I think it's part of this thing that I can't make out, so you can understand why I'm a little gun-shy. And that's setting aside the fact," I add, warning flashing behind my eyes for just a moment, "that as I said, I've been clear with you. There’s this bizarre dichotomy to you, where sometimes you’re really here, behind your smiles or your cleverness, but usually, you’re not. And that adds disproportionately to the puzzle, because when you’re not there, it’s not for the right reasons.” I suspect it’s the immortal in him, the ancient being. How tiring can it get for a normal person to spend a long period of time with someone who is more in their youth? The pace and intensity of their emotions is exhausting. It’s moreso for someone who is twenty years older, and forty, and at several hundred, when no one but your prickly mother is anywhere near you level? Good Lord.

“So tell me," I say. "If I can figure everyone else out, why can't I figure out you? What am I missing? Every time I talk to you or even think about you, it’s there, nagging at me. These questions. You’re like a white space in my head. I don’t know where your lines are, and that has never happened to me before, not ever, not with anyone. ‘Who is he? What does he want? Was that laugh real? Was that look fake?’” I pause. “‘How much of that kiss was a calculation, or excused by one?’ Because it amounts to the same.” I do nothing to keep the sadness from my voice at the thought. The truth is, the idea of giving myself over to him scares the shit out of me for a lot of reasons, but I’d stab myself before I got into those with him, especially right now. “Since I have a reasonably functional brain, of my two options here, which do you figure I consider more likely? That out of  _everyone_  outside those doors who would fall over themselves to get even a glance from you, I am the one special flower in all the world, Sun Summoning aside? Or that you're putting pressure on my weak spots so you can maneuver me toward some end I can’t see yet? ‘Don’t like it, Alina? Sorry. If you have sense, you’ll see I’m right in time. I don’t have the luxury of asking permission first.’

I grit my teeth, because I hate what I'm about to say, but I have to say it all the same. _“I don’t want to be Genya._  Not like that.” My voice almost cracks on the words. “I want the choice of my own freedom, not an illusion of it. And I don’t want to care for you as personally and deeply as I do, only to find out later that you took that and used it as a tool against me. Love is better than that. And I know you are, too, even if you don’t.”

Shock flashes over his face, and I hurry to explain, “I’m not talking about romantic love. I’m not touching that right now with a fifty foot pole.” His eyes twitch toward narrowing, and I have no idea why, so I ignore it. “But I understand the gravitas you exert over other people, and in particular over Grisha, and I’ve spent a long time looking at the things I feel toward you, because I like to spare myself other people's mistakes, and that one? Pretty common around here. But whatever draw I feel to you, whatever connection - and I very much do feel those things - it isn’t that. Which I know because I feel it in myself, too, the place the…  _youness_  of you tugs at. Your age, your authority, your confidence, all those indefinable things that make a person magnetic. Grisha are a closed, survivalist tribe, despite what you've built here, which gives a legend among them that much more power and appeal. I feel this just like everyone else does. The difference is that I know it's there, and I've been meticulous about learning where it stops and I start, because I don't like to be owned or controlled, least of all by illusions.”

Now he just looks consternated. I wish I could appreciate it.

I would swear his hands clench behind his arms, just for a moment. I sit up, forcing myself to appear at least mostly relaxed.

"You wanted me to explain myself. This is the best I can do: I was falling apart yesterday, and when you, someone I want to care about but can't make heads or tails of, asked me for what you did, you threw a cargo hold's worth of complicated onto the top of the pile that was already threatening to topple me. I probably would have gone to my room. I would have meditated, or hit something, or gone back outside and run until I couldn't feel my legs anymore just to get back a sense of equilibrium before trying to make sense of it and figuring out who to be the next day. But I didn't get that far, because I ran into something that I knew would work better, and I knew it was just... so far beyond stupid. But I know who he is, and I know I can trust him, and so I dove the fuck in so that for the first time in months, one Goddamned thing could be simple. So I could just shut off for a little while. Tell me you can't understand that."

His face hardens, ostensibly at how casually I'm talking about it, but I don't care. He doesn't have the right to show me such bald, open jealousy. Part of it is my fault for assuming he could or would understand that I might care about him without also wanting to jump into bed with him, but I have never given him a reason to think I wanted to  _belong_ to him, not like that, and he has to get it through his head that I am not something that's going to allow itself to be owned the way he wants to. My care and affection are voluntary things, and I have to get him to a point, somehow, where he can start to have faith that they're not going to evaporate if he doesn't find a way to put some sort of collar on them. No pun intended.

"I like him," I explain gently. "He's an asshole, but I still like him. And if I never saw him again," I pause to allow a hint of pointed warning to flash behind my eyes, "I'd be sad, but it would hardly break me. I don't tend to get attached to most people, not like everyone else does. That was why it _could_ happen." I pause, gathering myself for what I'm about to say. "You are different. You're singular. When I'm with you, when I can forget, for a split second or two here and there, how unsettling I find the parts of you I can't pin down, I feel calm. I wish I had a way to get you to understand how huge that is. I knew you wanted more from me, but I could pretend that you could set it aside in favor of something better. Trysts end, they turn sour or warp, and I don't know how long I'm going to be here, especially not compared to you. What you wanted... I'm in no position to give it, and frankly, you had no right to ask, not when I don’t even know who you are.

"‘I don’t remember what my name is,’” I scoff. “I get that that was a more palatable answer than ‘piss off, that’s a personal question,’ but come on." I hang my head a little and try to scrub my hands over it, but run into Genya's work, and suddenly, the restriction of such a simple thing as having my hair pinned up is more than I can tolerate. I yank the pins out as if I find them personally offensive and toss them away from me onto the table. But then it's like my kefta is too tight, too. I surge up out of the chair and turn my back on him, trying to remember how to breathe, how to fit into my own skin. I can't watch him when I'm like this, and that just makes the itching worse.

My hands are on my hips and my face is tipped up to the ceiling when he asks, "Would it surprise you to know that you already seem to know me better than most?”

I huff a laugh. “Yes.” My face scrunches up. “No? ...Sort of.” But his question gives me an anchor to hold onto, something to put me back in my body, so I turn around and cross my arms low over my torso, leaning back. And I notice a single line of cold on my face, running from my eye down to my chin. For a split second, I’m bewildered. I touch my fingers to it and pull them away, staring at the wetness there in disbelief. I don’t cry. Nothing makes me cry.

There’s a shift of fabric and cool fingers wrap around mine, slowly. His second hand joins it, and I can't help but close my eyes. There's that calm I was just talking about, and it's on top of the almost sedating effect of his power.

What's washing through him I can only describe as impulsivity, and confused anger as he watches it happen. After last night, I can almost relate, even as I know how much worse it must be for him.

"I could not have been prepared for you," he says, as if both an admission and statement of simple fact. "I am singular, you were right. But Alina, so are you." My eyes snap up to his, wary. His knuckles brush my cheek, nothing more than a whisper of contact. "You have no idea," he murmurs. "You find me difficult to understand. It _frustrates_ you," he says, almost making a mockery of the word. He steps closer. "Imagine what it must be like for me. It's rare that anything surprises me, least of all other people. But you...."

Abruptly, he releases my hand and steps away. He backs up until he can lean against the side of the table, crossing his arms over his chest, considering me. 

"Tell me something," he says lightly.

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, I think you're past your quota of personal information for the month."

"That's exactly it. My people are loyal, Alina, and the number who know of my plan for the King is exceptionally small. So how, exactly, do you know?"

Oh.

Shit.

_Shit._

I explain my tendency toward research projects and how that lent itself to combing through hundreds of years of census information, and to finding the physician's notes.

He looks appreciative. But he also looks like he think's I'm full of shit.

"You speak old Ravkan?" he asks as if it's a casual question.

Suddenly, I feel as if I've swam too far out into the ocean and am only now realizing that I can't get back to land.

"No," I tell him. "I took a liking to a Corporalki girl who has a talent for languages and used her help as an excuse to get to know her better."

He rolls right on as if I didn't even answer. Or as if I passed one test so he can now fling the next at me. "You must have read every book here and at the Grand Palace if you were reduced to combing through census information. And in only a few months?"

I give him a dry look. "I prefer things other people overlook. I'm sure you'll find that shocking."

"But census information is dry reading, and you must have combed over dozens of volumes. Even a historian would consider that an inhumane task. It would take a team months to get through what you read, never mind to put together any information of value. Unless you were looking for something specific."

"...Are you enjoying yourself?" I ask with deadly calm.

"Not especially."

"Then maybe you should knock it off," I snap.

Annoyance flashes behind his eyes. "You're talking about sifting through a desert, one grain of sand at a time, and happening to come upon a speck of diamond so small as to be invisible to the naked eye and so covered in dirt as to be indistinguishable from what's around it, Alina."

"Maybe it rained," I bite out. "You said yourself that I tend to see holes. Maybe I needed a break from all things 'We're Grisha and aren't we so wonderful and tragic and amazing?' Maybe dry and boring felt like a nice palate cleanser."

He smiles, and it is fucking terrifying. “And as _you_ pointed out, I see through people. So why are you lying to me?”

 _"Lying_ to you?" I parrot in disbelief. "I just got done bearing my throat to you and handing you a fucking knife!" I shout.

He pushes up from the table and again, we find ourselves inches apart. The air between us this time, though, is very different. “You're right," he says, his voice low and quiet and for all intents and purposes, calm. "So allow me to ask you another question, instead: of all the things you could have chosen, why census information?"

"I don't-- Look, there isn't some note spelling out your master plan tucked into the pages, ok? And I just had questions--"

"What questions?"

"Basically every question from now until the end of time, and honestly you're not helping detract from them right now!" 

He's too good at winding me up, and I'm afraid I might lose my grip on the knowledge that there is  _no way he could know,_ because it sure as shit seems like he does.

 _"Think,"_ he says, and there is an intensity in his face and voice that has me suddenly realizing that my fear is making me see this wrong. He's digging for something, yes, but it isn't an accusation. In fact, I think his phrasing it that way is nothing more than an attempt to do exactly what it's been succeeding at: knocking me off-balance. 

 _"_ _Why the census information?"_ he prods. "What drew you to it, specifically?"

I open my mouth, but can't make anything come out right away. I can't put together what he's looking for, which means I can't do anything but flail around in the dark.

...But maybe if I can give him enough options, he'll just answer the question for me.

"Maybe it was a benign way to get as much or as little time with her as I wanted? Maybe I was curious how we've changed, or how badly the Fold has hit us over the years, or what has been its fault and what can be blamed on other things. Maybe I wanted to do something that felt completely and totally unrelated to anything I was supposed to be doing. Maybe I wanted to know if anyone in this stupid royal bloodline has ever been worth anything." I shrug, and I don't have to pretend at how helpless I feel. But I think of one more thing to say: "Maybe I just wanted to know more about you."

We're nearing the target now, I can see it. "And you thought you'd find that in census information from hundreds of years ago?"

I go very still. This is too close to a truth, and he is far too invested in it. I know it had been a relief to him when he hadn't had to lie to Alina about who and what he was any longer, despite the circumstances, but I also know he would not have given up putting those antlers around her neck, not for anything. He wants to be known, yes. But as much as he wants someone to walk eternity with, it pales compared to his need for power. I know which one he would choose every time.

"I wanted to know about the ones who came before you," I say, doing nothing to hide my wary confusion.

"Why?" he asks immediately.

"I don't...."

"How did you know about the Fjerdan attack? How did you know I didn't grow up with everything at my fingertips? What makes you choose to look at one thing and set aside something else?"

"...Deductive reasoning?"

Annoyance flashes over his face. "You're smarter than this, Alina," he snaps.

"I'm also not used to having someone try to pry information out of me on the spot, _Baghra!"_

As if I've just thrown cold water on him, his eyes widen. Distaste comes, and just as quickly goes. He gathers himself flawlessly and says, "You make it easy sometimes to forget that you haven't had any training. A natural talent like yours... frankly, Alina, it's unheard of."

"Yeah well yay for me. It's sure seeming worth it right now."

"Will you accept my apology?"

I look at him like he's grown a second head. "...I'll be honest, I didn't think that was in your lexicon."

"You yourself said you don't know me."

"I love it when you quote me," I mutter under my breath, hopefully too garbled for him to hear.

At a normal volume, I say, "And you argued. Look, can you just tell me what it is you want to say or ask whatever you're getting at before I have an ulcer or something? I've known what you had in the works at the Palace for a while. I haven't said anything and I don't plan to."

He gives me an odd look, as if something doesn't piece together all of a sudden. "You plan on leaving her there?"

I give him a look of naked, angry warning. "You made a construct of her life built around the idea of sacrifice and service and revenge. A silent hero, just like you. For fuck's sake, she believes you _help_ her. There is no world in which my taking that away ends well for her, and you don't just blow up someone's world because the letter of the moral code says you should. That would be asinine." I hold up a halting finger. "This is not an endorsement of what you did or what you are doing, it is a choice I am making because as far as I can tell, it's what's right for _her,_ and for fuck's sake she has earned it. I hate not telling her sometimes, just leaving her there knowing what I know. It's like swallowing acid. Especially since I'm so adamant about not having choices taken away from myself. Maybe it's hypocritical and despicable, I don't know. What it keeps coming down to is that this _feels_ like the right thing to do, even if I hate it, and I will never choose my feelings over someone else's well-being. And unfortunately for my gnawing sense of guilt, my intuition doesn't usually steer me wrong."

His eyes catch  _fire_ and he leans forward. "You _feel_ it's the right thing to do. Like you had a feeling about traveling along the Vy."

I look at him askance. "I mean... sure? I guess intuition is usually considered a feeling."

"Is that why you decided on the census information? A feeling? Think, Alina. Is that why you have so much faith in your theories that you put them forward as accusations? Because what you were talking about wasn't ideas, they were beliefs. Things you have _faith_ in."

"...You're doing the thing again where you won't just fucking  _say_ something, and if you keep it up," I lean in to meet him,  _"I am going to set your hair on fire."_

He smiles like my threat is some kind of delight, and the feeling that I'm missing something big swells so wide that I want to scream. I'm not used to feeling like I'm in the dark. I wasn't even before I stepped into a world where I literally knew the future.

It's just a flash, but his smile grows. He leans back, looking positively, arrogantly smug, and eager.

"I wonder sometimes how much we really understand our own gifts," he muses. It's obviously a lead-in, or I might actually snap. But still, he pauses, and for all the world he is looking at me like he's waiting for me to catch on to something, and the eagerness there is almost frenetic.

What is he looking for?

_My people didn't betray me. How did you know?_

_Why the census information? Why that, specifically?_

_Think, Alina._

_You have a feeling._

His words echo through my mind to another time, when I had told him of a friend with an impossible gift for tracking:

_I wonder sometimes how much we really understand our own gifts._

Is he... does he think it's my  _powers_ that let me put this together? Why in God's name would that be the conclusion he jumped to? How is it more of a logical assumption that I'm divining something from thin air than it is that someone spilled a secret, or that I stumbled onto something I shouldn't have?

The answer snaps into place and my eyes go wide, welding to his.

"Oh my God," I breathe. "What else can you do?"

A smile twists over his lips, and he looks triumphant. Satisfied. "Since I was a child, I have had a talent for seeing what others wish to hide. The things that live in shadow. But I grew up with full use of my powers, Alina. I was trained and taught from the beginning." He looks down at me, and repeats, "What you have put together is not possible. Not by normal means."

I open my mouth to deny it on reflex, but hesitate. This is a stretch, and a dangerous one, but I'm not going to get a better write-off for "intuiting" the impossible. 

"I imagine you've always seen more than those around you," he says. "You've written it off as intelligence, or a tendency to pay attention, perhaps simply a natural talent. But can you tell me that it hasn't changed since you got here?" His fingers twitch, and he moves his hands to clasp them behind his back. "That you don't see more, or put things together more quickly? That you don't get more 'feelings' that tend to pan out?"

Slowly, not taking my eyes off his or hiding the fact that I'm thrown far off-balance by this, I say, “...Not technically.”

“How else have you changed?”

After a long moment, I avert my gaze. “...If you called on someone who used to know me," I murmur, "they'd tell you I was a different person."

"We are facets of the same family of power, Alina. Singular power, unique to us in all the world, in all of history." I feel a surge of annoyance on Baghra's behalf. "If I can pierce the shadows, would it be such a stretch for you to bring things to light?"

"Oh, come on!" I argue. And then kick myself. In an attempt to deflect, I accuse, "You get Genya to spy on me half the time, is it--" But I cut myself off, because he looks like I just made his point for him, and all I can do is an impersonation of a cat that just got caught in a rainstorm with no shelter in sight.

He surprises me by asking, “Are you angry with her?” He sounds like he actually wants to know. He sounds gentle. It makes me furious, as if he has a right to the presumption when it comes to her or anything to do with her.

“No," I say, annoyed and eager to dismiss the subject. It hadn't been my intent to use her like that. "She's a good person with a crap job to do who's in a horrific and unspeakable situation. I wouldn't get angry at a fire if I stuck my hand into it and then got burned, either. I know she reports to you sometimes and I could probably point out the conversations you prompted her to have, just like I know she wishes she didn’t need to, just like we both know that I'm not just a job to her anymore." And it isn't like I'm not lying to her, too. "For whatever reason, she likes me for who I am. I’m not going to throw that away.” Or take it away from her, either.

Quietly, he says that exact thing out loud, and I can't stop myself from looking at him in shock.

"You're both good people," he says.

"How dare you," I say, droll.

After a moment watching me, he resumes his seat, and holds a hand out for me to do the same. I hesitate, but I know we're not done, so I join him.

"If a Materialki showed a talent for woodworking, would you say it was independent of his powers?" he asks.

I consider before answering, "Probably, the same way whether a person is more inclined to science or art or prefers company over solitude exists independent of their powers. But I'd also say that if.... Oh. God damnit,” I curse vehemently, because I’ve just realized where he’s taking this. Openly churlish, I finish my thought as if reciting a note. “If you think for a moment it’s not enhanced by his powers, then you’re an idiot. But that's tangible and measurable, it makes sense. He manipulates his medium and the microscopic level."

Again, he looks like I just made his point for him.

"Fine," I say. "Fine, I magically divine information from thin air. Now how worried are  _you?"_

I said it to be argumentative, but the blank, heavy look on his face has me wishing I could pluck the words out of the air and shove them back down my throat.

"Do I have anything to be worried about?"

"...You know," I muse lightly, "if I ever get it in my head that I might want to take up a life at court," I stop myself from reminding him of Vasily's pending proposal, because  _ew_ , "all I'll need to do is spend five minutes around you to be cured of my temporary insanity. So that's a comforting thought, at least." Broodily, I prompt, "Ivan?"

“I have never lied to you, Alina,” he says. “His assignment was planned.”

I snort. “You absolutely have lied to me, thank you, so you can cram that right back into whatever orifice you choose. I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that just like morality isn't black and white, you don’t have to actually lie to still, you know, be lying. But that isn’t what I was referring to.”

He studies me for a moment that stretches well past appropriate. I would swear he wants to say something, or maybe ask me something. But all he does twine his fingers together on the top of the table, for all the world perfectly at ease. “You’re a grown woman, Alina. You are free to make your own mistakes,” I narrow my eyes, unamused, “so long as you act with discretion. I can count on you to do that, can’t I?”

_I can count on you to keep my secrets?_

I consider for a minute before I answer, "The fact that you have to ask that says a lot more about you than it does about me, especially since a substantial portion of this entire conversation has hinged on our skills at reading other people, and how mine have a long way to go to catch up to yours. Yes, you can count on me to not allow my decisions to cause you harm." I feel a swell of anger at the idea that I would let  _anything_ hurt him. "Just like I can apparently continue to count on you to be a backhanded, secretive dick when you want to be. It's truly endearing, I really recommend keeping it up. I'm sure it's not exhausting at all." I stand up and smile acidly at him. "Have a fantastic day, DL. I look forward to the return of your preternaturally loyal and pissy manservant, since his assignment had absolutely nothing to do with what happened last night."

"The field is an unpredictable place, Alina. Ivan is a powerful and capable Grisha, but sooner or later, every man's time comes."

Any amusement or warmth drops from my face like a boulder down a cliff. "Then I'll just point out how inopportune it would be for his time to come now."

Once I'm gone and the door closed behind me, I take a moment to lean against it and release a heavy breath. "Stupid, arrogant, manipulative, man-child jackhole," I swear in near-silence. "...Then again," I say with a considering noise, "I suppose all things considered, that went pretty well, huh? I'm not murdered, he's not murdered, no priceless artifacts were thrown against walls...."

I push away from the door and snort. “Magical Sun Summoner Vision. Sweet baby Jesus, if only."

 

* * * * *

 

She isn’t on the light, so she doesn’t see the little smile that twitches at his lips in response to her muttering. It’s amused, yes, but more than that, it is darkly eager.

 

* * * * *

 

A few things occur to me on my slow walk back. The most immediately troubling is that rather than possibly having planted a seed or two of the beginnings of some kind of honesty, or at least a door I might be able to use later, what I might have just done in letting him conclude that I have the ability to basically divine the future and see into men’s hearts is give him even more motivation to make sure that he has the option of literally controlling me. You know, just in case.

I spend a good deal of time silently swearing, and what’s left of the the day in the Eastern stables. It’s late enough that I will have missed Zoya, and I’m frayed enough that I’m willing to risk the unlikely chance that I’ll run into her there, anyway. I figured I should put off our probable sparring match until I had a cooler head.

I don’t make any new friends, but Botkin compliments me on my ferocity.

 

* * * * *

 

Melschoi and Polnt are breathless when they get back to the little camp late the next day, but the first thing out of their mouths the second their feet hit the ground is Polnt saying, “We saw her. The Sun Summoner.” He’s flushed and his eyes are bright.

Oretsev is on his feet instantly. “Was she alright?”

Melschoi laughs. “Alright? Are you kidding me? I don’t know who spit in her jeweled cup, but she looked like she was going to murder someone. Honestly, I was almost afraid for  _the Darkling._  It was him she was glaring at when she told us to get out.” He shudders a little at the thought of anyone being so suicidally stupid.

Oretsev’s brows pinch together. None of the others have seen him look so intense except when he’s focused on tracking. Honestly, most of the time he just looks like he’s not even really home. You have to say his name two or three times just to get his attention.

“Tell us everything,” he demands.

He gets some funny looks, but the younger men are only too happy to oblige.

 

* * * * *

 

None of the important people - the ones who keep us fed and tended to - are talking about Ivan’s absence in the privacy of workrooms or kitchens, which means it wasn’t a surprise, and it’s not especially unusual.

If the Darkling wasn’t the Darkling, I wasn’t me, and the situation wasn’t what it was, I might apologize for the accusation.

For his part, at least, the Darkling has gone back to ignoring me. I’m not certain if it’s part of a game, or if he’s just let himself sink back into “I’m an immortal and distracting myself is easy.” I assume the latter, both because I think it makes more sense right now, and because it takes pressure off of me. I don’t want more pressure right now. More pressure is not my friend.

 

* * * * *

 

Lately, I’ve been trying to see if I can get under people’s skin. Not in the usual sense, but with my power.

I can read facial expressions and lips, and though I couldn’t yet tell you what was on a page of text to save my life - that one's a looong way off - if it has a texture, I can make it out. What I want to know is, if I can look inside someone’s pocket, can I make out what’s under their skin? Specifically, their pulse. So I’ve been working in the miniscule to cultivate a sense of finesse, exploring nooks and crannies, as it were, and venturing down hallways and through the cracks of doors, things like that. Remote viewing, sort of. I’ve learned a good deal about what goes on in The Forbidden Anatomy Rooms (Mostly, wait for it, anatomy lessons. I have no interest in the rooms where they experiment yet.), and have had the good fortune to only “walk” in on one tryst.

It’s also how I find out that sure, it’s normal enough for Ivan to be away. What turns out  _not_  to be normal is how long he’s stayed gone.

A small group of oprichniki are playing cards at a round table in their barracks. It’s the middle of the night, and I am sitting alone in the Main Hall, my legs flung sideways over the arm of a comfortable chair, hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea. My eyes are closed as I concentrate to watch them.

“Wasn’t Ivanov supposed to be back last week?” Living Tree Trunk Number One asks. He's clearly the youngest of the group.

I nearly snort. Is Ivanov his full name? Or... oh, God. Is his name Ivan Ivanov? I will never let him live it down, so help me.

Living Tree Trunk Number Two grunts his assent.

“He’s been reassigned twice since he left,” a woman at their table remarks. “He goes where he’s needed, you know that. Now quit gossiping.”

“Who’s gossiping?” One grumbles.

“You are,” a man with a deceptively small build says, eyes on his hand. He pulls a card from the middle and moves it to the far right. “Like a girl.”

“I take offense to that,” the woman says.

“Every girl should,” Two remarks. He has a gap between his right lateral incisor and his canine. “Cordy looks like a mule’s backside.”

“Not a complaint I got from your sister,” One - Cordy - gibes.

Two kicks him under the table.

Cordy makes a disgruntled noise. “Touchy about that, eh?”

“Not as touchy as she’d be if I told her you said it. You wouldn’t get a welt on your shin, you’d lose an eye.”

The woman at the table smiles secretively to herself.

 

* * * * *

 

So that was concerning. Do you know what else is concerning?

The Fjerdan Ambassador arrives back at the Grand Palace the next day, a week before our meeting. Only it’s a  _new_  Fjerdan Ambassador, not the one I have spent months researching.

When I finally get his name, I just about shit my own stomach.

It’s Magnus Opjer.

Nikolai’s biological father.

 

* * * * *

 

When I let myself in for our lesson, Baghra is sitting in her little chair, staring unseeing into the grate of the woodstove.

“Tell me something, girl,” she says by way of greeting. Her tone is soft around the edges, and almost open.

“...Alright,” I reply, respectful and cautious. Quietly, I sit down on the chair opposite hers.

“You came here knowing everything he would do. Has done. What he’s capable of, how far he’ll go. He would butcher your friend, turn your little princeling into a nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his days. He would murder your countrymen and comrades and feed women and children to his abominations to make a point. He hung the people who raised you, he burned your home. He took his own mother’s eyes. Why not just stop him and be done with it?”

“...I’m  _trying_  to stop him.”

She comes to life suddenly, thudding her cane hard on the floor, and spits at me, “That isn’t what I mean and you know it! Don’t play stupid with me!”

I didn’t realize until right now exactly how much Baghra usually keeps herself shut down and folded away, because she is alive, and she is fire. She also told me not to  _play_  stupid. That’s basically a full-blown compliment. She can’t even be bothered to keep her usual walls up right now.

I consider my words before carefully saying, “I’ve looked at who he is and what made him that way. Until I have no choice but to believe otherwise, I want to act based on the premise that there’s hope for him. Because I think there is.

“I know he has the potential to be a monster. He’s amoral and overconfident, he’s detached, and he excuses atrocity with what he considers noble intent. And those are his  _good_  days. But the world needs people who can think in the ways that are necessary and do the things that are necessary, so others can believe they live in a world where good triumphs over evil, and that justice will out. Sort of like… this is a terrible simile, but sort of like how some people empty our chamber pots so the rest of us don’t have to live in our own shit. It’s naive to think that the world is a good place and that people get what they deserve, but it’s a kind of naivety I want to protect. I think it’s invaluable. If nothing else, people have a right to be safe. We’re humans. Angels and devils both. I’d like to think that means some people can bear the worst of the weight so others just don’t have to.

“I don’t think… no, I  _know_  he doesn’t want to be the way he is. Not really. The question is what that’s going to mean. I’ve seen him snap and make the decision to give into the darker parts of himself. He errs toward that. But what he told me about wanting a sense of balance, something to keep him in check.... Maybe he lacks that in himself. Maybe he wants the excuse to give in to that particular ‘weakness.’ Maybe he just wants to believe he’s  _capable_  of being better so he can make those ugly choices with a cleaner conscience. He’s had a lot of years to give in to the lust for power that we are apparently so prone to. I understand that for him, I’m just the next iteration of that. But that’s not  _all_  I am. He’s made me a new variable in the equation. I can present him with options he didn’t have before, just by existing. I can be his permission to look at something from a different angle or try it a different way.

“When he was younger, his instinct was to care, to appreciate compassion where he saw it, and to  _want_  to reach out to other people and form connections, despite the fact that you already had him thinking that ‘alone’ was the only way he could be or should be. With the life he’s had, he could be flaying people for fun by this point. Or murdering puppies, just to feel something. But he’s held on to his mind. He’s not a sociopath, and he’s not a sadist.” I frown. “Mostly.” I take an audible breath. “I know it’s lunacy. Most men more or less stop changing by the time they’re thirty, nevermind… I don’t know, eleven hundred? Thirteen hundred? Old grooves are easy and comfortable to slip into, especially when you know they get the job done. The chance of success here is minimal. But I’m going to give it everything I have, because I want to. Because....”

 _Because I care about him._  I feel protective of him.

“...Because he’s a singular person, and because that’s  _my_  choice in all of this.

“I mean, he’s been in isolation for hundreds of years. He was raised without having a basic sense of compassion or moral obligation to his fellow human instilled, but still uses ‘I will fix this world’ as his reason for everything. Yes, he wants power, but I don’t blame him for that, not when he was taught to believe that power was his only sense of safety in the world. Frankly, the fact that he isn’t a complete lunatic and restricts his considerable sense of brutality to ‘you betrayed me’ is astounding. If I can fare half so well when I’m half his age, I’ll be lucky.” It’s something I try not to think about yet, because the thought makes me feel dizzy and sick at the same time.

But ah, I’ve said something wrong, because her look goes hard.

“So you plan to take the stag,” she says. Her flat voice is packed with judgement, with resignation, and with disappointment, but not with surprise.

“Not the stag, no,” I say, guarded. “But I know what you’re implying, and I know you won’t believe me, but it has nothing to do with power. I’d just as soon not have it at all. But since I’m the one who got the job, and Aleksander,” she can’t hide the smallest twitch at hearing his name, “isn’t going to be dying any time soon, I need to stick around. I saw what happened when his hope of a companion finally came to life, only to be yanked away. I saw his face. There was nothing left, and he intended to make the rest of the world just as much of a barren hellscape as his insides. He put everything on me.”

She taps a finger on her cane. Once, twice. “The dragon, then?”

I look down. In a way, taking Mal’s life and claiming that power would be the best way to ground myself. I don’t intend to take more than one amplifier - that will be more than enough to ensure I live as long as Aleksander. And if I felt the personal cost of human life every time I Summoned....

The stag was nobility and steadfastness, the sea whip was ferocity, each power with its own taste. Part of me wonders what Mal would be.

I don’t object to entertaining idle thoughts; I understand the difference between wondering about a thing and considering it, and we don’t have control over a lot of our emotions or the things that pop into our heads at random. They will always out over our thinking minds. It’s much easier to understand your true feelings when you don’t make an enemy of every passing thing whose very idea you find objectionable. I let my thoughts in, I let my questions in, and I see them for what they are: as impersonal as a breeze or a rainfall. As clues to be interpreted, like dreams you have during the day. I don’t fight them, and I don’t judge them, because they give me a lot of insight into myself.

“If you think he will miss the chance to collar you, girl, you are deluded.”

I look at her with reproach. “Tell me you know me better than that.” She gives no answer either way. “In any case, I’m not worried. Mal won’t do something to put me at risk, and I told him not to find the stag.” Why that one has to be first, I don’t know. Easier to track than a sea dragon or a phoenix, I suppose.

“My son won’t be led on a wild goose chase indefinitely.”

“Well he doesn’t really have any other options. I told you, if Mal doesn’t find it, it doesn’t get found. That’s the recipe.”

“That was the recipe for  _her,”_  Baghra says, a soft thud of her cane on the floor punctuating the last word. “Think, girl. Are you so certain it wouldn’t come to you? That you wouldn’t call to it without meaning to? If you are as pious as you say,” I snort, and she raps her cane against the ground in warning. “Morozova was a strange man with stranger ideas,” she snaps. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he designed his creatures to seek out the one person who didn’t desire their power.”

I pale, and then my brow scrunches. “No. That wouldn’t make sense, Mal and she were--”

“Were two lonely children who had nothing but one another. Is it so difficult to believe they would come together on their own? That fate chose to throw you together in the first place may or may not have anything to do with it. But just because  _she_  needed him nearby in order for the creatures to appear does not mean  _you_  will.”

I sit in silence while that sinks in. While a lump of stone settles in my gut.

The stag had walked up to Alina, yes. It had stood waiting for her decision. But it hadn’t  _appeared_  until she and Mal had come together, same as with the Sea Whip. Just as the stag’s reaction to her had been twofold, Alina had been of two minds about wanting its power in the first place.

This really would be a perfect irony in all this bullshit.

I let my face drop into my hands with a quiet groan. For a minute, she lets me stew. Then she stands up.

“Come, girl. We have work to do.”

 

* * * * *

 

I’m so distracted that for a while I actually don’t realize what’s going on. It isn’t until the fourth time she yells at me for more (“Do you think this is a game? I told you to  _show me what you can do!_  Stop wasting my time!”) that I realize what this must be.

Abruptly, the light winks out and I let my hands drop. I ignore the bite of her cane over my shin as best I can, and I melt into the space around us.

And there he is, standing just behind the tree line at our backs, leaning his shoulder against a trunk.

I still think something happened to elicit the conversation Baghra and had before coming out here, but now the timing of it makes sense, at least. I sigh heavily.

Her cane flies out again, but this time, I catch it right out of the air, my “sight” still cast wide, and toss it dispassionately onto the frozen lake. She swells like she is some kind of literal rage demon about to go supernova.

Ready at any moment for her to more or less physically attack me, I sit down, the crust of snow crunching under me as settle and cross my legs. I take up a position like I’m about to meditate.

Her hand clamps painfully around the back of my neck, her fingers digging into my jaw, and she yanks my head around to look at her. “Have you gone deaf as well as stupid?” she hisses with dangerous quiet. There’s a warning in her eyes, I can see it plain as day.

The Darkling takes a step forward like he’s going to intervene, but at the last moment, he stops himself, watching.

I keep the discomfort from my face and dart my eyes toward the ground in his direction to tell her I know he’s there. “I know what night this is now,” I say, whisper-quiet. “You want to see how far I can push myself, how deep my well of power goes? Then take your hand the fuck off of me so I can get back to work.”

She doesn’t get more angry. In fact, it’s like someone throws a bucket of water over the rage in her that was dangerously close to igniting. There’s a moment of pause, and then she does as I ask. She stands up. She backs away, and nods for me to get on with it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she looked worried. Deep, deep down.

It’s all I can do not to rub my neck or my jaw. Woman has sensibly short nails, but she knows how to use them.

...Yes, Aleksander could definitely have come out worse.

I have never concerned myself with raw power. All I cared about was dexterity and practical application. I know this test is designed to fail, that no matter how much power I call, he will conclude that it isn’t enough. That doesn’t mean I’m not curious to see what I can do when pushed.

I do as I have been taught: I close my eyes, I breathe, and I find the place in myself where the light and I are one. It takes long minutes to let go of the fact that pressure rests on what I’m about to do, but I manage it, and they both wait patiently. And then I explode into the well-worn paths of light all around me.

Months ago, I would have pushed inward and tried to force this, like flexing a muscle to lift something I know is too heavy. But it isn’t months ago, and I have learned so much.

I don’t push, or pull. I don’t strain. I  _open._

The temperature climbs, and I see light through my eyelids. It goes white.

I open wider still, and the loose tendrils of hair around my face begin to flutter. I grow hot, then cold.

Baghra steps back.

Aleksander’s eyes widen with hunger and anticipation before he’s forced to shield them. I have become like looking at a white sun.

I stretch up into the sky, calling and answering the light of the moon and stars. I weave between crystals of snow on the ground, through hair cracks in the ice of the lake. The energy all around me, inside the trunks of trees and under the shells of the beetles living in their bark, under the skin of the people, hums and accelerates and reaches back toward me in an endless loop that feeds and renews itself.

I bathe the lake to its far shore and penetrate the dark of the school beyond, I open eyes deep in slumber and feel the tugs of hearts, human and animal as they thump in shock and confusion. I crash over the grounds and above the palace walls.

When I am wreathed in pure daylight for over a mile in every direction, I reach my natural limit.

I hear the old-not-old woman urge me for more.

I try, I ask, but there is no more to be had, and no more to give. I have reached a membrane that I cannot break, and I sense that if I try to force it anyway.... There is more, there. At the edges. But I would sooner gouge out my own eyes.

Gently, I retract. The white outside my lids turns to pink, then red, then black. The air heats again, then turns frigid, and the world goes still.

I open my eyes.

Quietly, I say, “It has no more to give, Baghra. If I push farther....” I look up at her, and I see in her eyes that something changed in me. I look to the sky. “You don’t want me to push farther.”

First shock, then grim understanding settles over her face. She says nothing, but watches me as if she’s seeing something… not new, exactly, but unexpected. I can almost make out the crisp gray of her eyes without looking at them. I feel alive and vibrant, opened wide and vast, vibrating with my own power.

The Darkling doesn’t move right away. Like his mother, he watches. But a thing will not stay still forever, and so he walks forward, and he says his three words: “It isn’t enough.”

They argue.

After a time, I calmly get up and leave.

“You have no idea what you’re toying with here, boy. As usual.”

But I don’t know if he hears, because he has turned to catch up to me, because I didn’t stop when he said my name.

I am not his toy, and tonight, flush with the sight of how far I could push myself after so short a relative time, the toy is what he wants. Not the person, but the tool he has waited for and planned around for so long.

“Your progress with your Summoning is unparalleled, Alina. I hope you know that. What I said wasn’t a criticism. But you must understand--”

“The Fold,” I say calmly, my eyes ahead. “I know. ‘Ravka cannot wait.’ You want me to take an amplifier.” I hum. “‘And not just any amplifier,’ he says next.”

The Darkling looks at me like I am a wonder, or perhaps like I have grown a second head. That eager greed cracks open again. But I think he also looks a little disturbed.

Good.

“What do you know?” he asks. And it’s exactly that:  _What do you know,_  not  _Do you know something?_

I shrug. “Nothing. In the pejorative sense. And the philosophical one. The way you mean it? ...Also probably nothing. Better to make sure we’re on the same page either way, so by all means, tell me your story.”

He considers me, and I think he’s considering telling me to go first, but I also think he’s not certain what to do with the abrupt shift in my personality. Neither am I, to be honest, but I feel so weightless that I don’t even have the desire to look at it too closely.

 _Still thinking you want me to have_ more _power?_  part of me wants to ask.

“Morozova’s stag,” the Darkling says. “You’ve heard of it?”

“No. And I’ve never tried kvas, either, what with growing up under a rock. Of course I’ve heard of it.” I finally stop, and I turn to look at him. There is no guile or game in my eyes, but my words keep up with the necessary steps of the dance. “You think it’s an amplifier? And real?”

“Every bit as real as you are. Kings and Darklings have been hunting it for generations. I believe it is the most powerful amplifier ever known.”

“And you think that since I’m here now,” I conclude, “it’s magically going to show up.”

He looks at me a moment, then nods. “I believe it was meant for you. I can feel it.”

Something in his eyes is too intense. Or not the right kind of intense for the moment. I cant my head, just a little, and look back without fear.

“What do you think he wanted?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Your great-great-however-many-greats grandfather. What law do you suppose he was trying to break when he made his… error?”

“I can only guess. And to be honest, I’ve tried not to look too closely. I have no interest in repeating his mistakes.”

My eyes stay locked on his, impossible to read. “That’s good,” I finally say.

Abruptly, I grunt and carry on my way. “I’m going to lock myself in my room for a while now. Nice knowing you.”

He watches me walk away, looking downright bemused. People’s faces tell you the most incredible things when they’re looking at your back.

He turns around and heads back toward Baghra, and something about the way his expression changes before it falls away alltogether makes me wonder if I might need to be worried.

Then again, it’s Baghra. He may have blinded her once, but I have every confidence it was because she didn’t put up a fight. She’ll be just fine.

When I get back to my room, I lay atop the covers, fully clothed, just… glowing, feeling more whole and still and perfect than I think I ever have. Eventually, I fall asleep, still luminous and glimmering.

 

* * * * *

 

The day before my lunch with Vasily and Magnus, I get called back to the War Room.

The Darkling drops a slim packet of papers in front of me. “That’s everything we have on Magnus Opjer,” he says. “I assume I don’t have to tell you who that is?”

I look from the papers up to him, confused. “No. But--”

“I’ve been called away. I have to leave immediately. Ivan will be back early tomorrow morning to escort you. Do not go without him.”

This is very clearly not a request.

I nod, though I feel a little lost. Why didn’t he just make them reschedule it? Or did he try, and he was refused? Who trumps who, the First Prince, or the Darkling? And would Vasily cry to his father if he lost? Pfft, of course he would.

Aleksander holds my eyes until he’s certain I mean it. Then something in his face shifts, and he touches a hand to my face. It’s brief, respectful of my desire for boundaries, I think, and he says, “Be very careful, Alina. He is more clever than he seems, and Fjerda is our most dangerous enemy. Both Ravka, and Grisha. They would love nothing more than your head.” He smiles, a twisted thing. “Many of them would even take it over mine right now.”

“...Way to not make it sound ominous or anything,” I say.

He turns and walks toward a bookcase. “You’re dismissed,” he says, apparently already back to wherever he was before I got here. Whatever emotion that had been there a moment ago is gone like a drop of ink in a river.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That thing where Alina barges in to the war room and DL goes “you heard the Sun Summoner.”? Straight up from [Good Morning Midnight.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935132/chapters/5309702) That fic, you guys. THAT FIC. Always, always THAT. FIC. *bites knuckle*
> 
> “Ok, I am made of questions right now” comes from, the internet tells me (I couldn’t remember my source) the movie Central Intelligence. A comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. It was cute. Problematic in places, but super cute. Easy to watch.
> 
> \- - -
> 
> I’m taking a break from this fic for a while. 
> 
> This isn’t a “punishment” (I don’t work that way), it’s the simple fact that my life comes with an extraordinary number of challenges and difficulties. Things most people are able to do by rote are endurance challenges for me. Upside: I get a lot of time to write. Downside: when people who couldn’t be bothered to read clearly marked tags and notes about a fic get so upset over said things happening that they become aggressively vitriolic in the comments (I’ve deleted the worst of them, don’t nobody need to see that sh*t), it takes something that’s supposed to be a pleasure, maybe even a little therapeutic, and actually requires a lot of courage and self-reassurance on my part (#TendYourMentalHealthGarden), and turns it into something that makes me nauseous instead.
> 
> ...That sentence was horrifying. Hopefully you were able to make sense of it.
> 
> With the last chapter, this just turned into one problem too many in my life. I’ll be back, because I enjoy this AU, and because enough of you are mature, patient, have confidence in me to craft a decent story, and are just plain awesome people.
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 11/25/18: Changed up the first scene a bit. Clarity, fleshed-out, steered Ivan a little more toward who I see him as in this fic.  
> 12/15/18 (in progress): Tweaks for clarity, character voice, concision, etc. Redid chunks of conversation during her big convo with DL.


End file.
